blööh1 Chapter 47: uninsp, a 9 to 5 fanfic

Uninspired (Mass Effect/Inspired Inventor)

By: sinereal

Uninspired

Mass Effect, Inspired Inventor

"Leon, come on! You're gonna miss it!"

Looking…

Status: ongoing

Published: 2023-12-06

Updated: 2024-02-07

Words: 80302

Chapters: 14

Original source: https/forum./threads/24954

Exported with the assistance of

Uninspired (Mass Effect/Inspired Inventor)

Introduction

Uninspired

Mass Effect, Inspired Inventor

"Leon, come on! You're gonna miss it!"

Looking up from my tablet, I found the short, thin form of my roommate standing in the doorway, wearing a frustrated expression. "Sure, Kel. You nerd."

"Shut uuup~!" came a whine I was entirely too familiar with at this point.

Kel was actually Kelly-a fourteen year old girl with short, dark brown hair and a small frame, just starting to fill out as puberty hit her hard. She was the epitome of a tomboy. She was awkward and tended to overcompensate by being loud and boisterous. It was kind of cute, really.

Putting the tablet down, I followed her deeper into the orphanage, towards the recreation room on this floor of the multi-story building. I knew what was coming, but there was little I could do to avoid it. It was a tradition, and kind of an obligation at this point, that the kids of each class/floor throw a party for each others' birthdays, because who else was going to celebrate them if not us-given that the majority of the children here were castoffs, unwanted children who were given away. As opposed to the much smaller number of people whose parents had died and they hadn't had anywhere else to go, like myself.

St. Nicholas Home and School for Children was a large, donation-funded orphanage that functioned as a safe drop-off/child abandonment shelter, in addition to taking children off the streets. As the name implied, it acted as both a home and school for its residents, offering classes up through the high school level. Compared to the horror stories I'd heard about Miami's normal public schooling, and public schools in general in this day and age, I was happy for the private school environment.

I'd already been through school once and that was more than enough. Being forced into public school a second time, after I'd gotten this second chance at life? Hell no. As soon as I was able, I was planning to test out and enter the workforce.

As we entered the dark rec-room, I rolled my eyes and played along. When the lights came on and thirty other kids yelled "SURPRISE!!!" I chuckled, smiling and going along with it as I was handed a slice of cheap cake from some supermarket bakery on a paper plate, the words 'Happy Birthday Leon' written on the cake. Kel pulled me away with a couple of cups of soda and a plate of cake of her own in hand, leading me to the sofa where some a news report was playing.

"It's almost time!" she bounced in place, setting my cup and hers down on the table as she grabbed the remote and turned it up.

On the screen was a view of the inside of a domed structure, and through the top of the dome we could see a background of black with a single floating object taking up the center of the shot. A blue and green sphere, with wisps of white, surrounded by a sea of stars. It was a sight anyone on Earth would recognize: the view of the Earth from the moon.

I listened with half an ear as clapping sounded from the TV and a man walked onto a stage and began to speak, commemorating Armstrong Outpost as the first human settlement on Luna. Beside me, Kelly made a quiet, excited sound and I shook my head, though I could understand the feeling.

I loved science and technology, and especially anything to do with space. Ever since finding myself reborn in this world, I'd felt a certain… restless wanderlust any time I looked at the stars. I didn't want to spend an entire second life on the ground-or even in this solar system. My parents in this life died in a boating accident off the coast of Florida when I was just eight, leaving me with some money held in an account I couldn't access until I was an adult and their home, but no living relatives to take care of me-meaning I couldn't just stay in the home I'd grown up in in this world. That was how I ended up in St. Nicholas and met Kelly.

The sudden change in my situation hadn't dulled my love of all things science and space-related. If anything, being forced into an orphanage had set me down the path to studying my way out of school, and out of the grasp of the system, as fast as I could. At fifteen as of today, I had only one year left before I could get myself emancipated, gain legal access to the funds and home my parents left me, and be done with the school system. I was already reviewing colleges online and trying to find one actually focused on STEM and not trying to force students into the indoctrination camp that was 'humanities' courses. I didn't need to waste multiple semesters' worth of my time (and money!) learning the communist manifesto or how awful I was for the original sin of being born with 'privilege' to justify the continued existence of those courses and departments full of useless bloat, when I could instead be studying stellar bodies… and science, too.

Kelly had picked up on that drive and had begun putting in effort-going from tomboy to nerdy tomboy over the course of a few years. She had spent years studying me, learning my likes and dislikes, and had by complete coincidence found that we liked the same things.

She wasn't fooling anyone. I was aware of her crush, but at the moment I was too focused on getting out to do anything about it. Besides, we were just kids. Well, teenagers now. And while a little fooling around might be normal for most kids our (physical) age, I'd wait until she was legal before making a move-that way I wouldn't feel like some sort of scumbag. It was more for my own sense of morals than any worry about legalities, really. I was old enough (mentally) that if she called me 'daddy' in bed, it'd be kind of awkward. Hot, but awkward.

Taking a bite of my chocolate cake, I watched the windbag drone on, before finally getting to the point. "… And on this day, July 20, 2069, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the very first lunar landing, we declare Armstrong Outpost Luna's first colony and open for business!"

My head suddenly swam and I wavered where I sat. Beside me, Kelly asked something, then put her plate down and took mine from my hands. She tugged on my arm and I found myself pulled down into her lap as my head throbbed and the light suddenly burned, forcing my eyes closed. Cool fingers ran through my hair and I tried to focus on that feeling as it felt like my brain caught fire. I'd had the occasional migraine before in my previous life and this felt like that, only so much worse.

Until eventually, it was over, just as suddenly as it had begun. And in its place was something new. A feeling of potential and…

Loading…

A word swam into view in the darkness behind my eyelids. A moment later, it was replaced by more-an entire menu, like I was looking at a computer screen.

Leon Reynolds. Experience: 1550xp. Points: 16.

Tech Tree

Upgrades

Missions*

Log

Codex

What the fuck? I wondered, the thought that I might have had a stroke crossing my mind, but the fact that what I was seeing wasn't going away and was clear and legible kind of led me to believe that might not be the case. Curiosity got the better of me and I tried to play with it. Seeing the asterisk beside 'Missions,' I tried to mentally select it.

Missions*

First time:

1. ~~Learn to navigate the menu.~~10xp.

2. View the options in the Shop. 10xp.

3. View the options in the Tech tree. 10xp.

4. View the options in Upgrades. 10xp.

5. ~~Read the available Missions.~~10xp.

6. Read the Log. 10xp.

7. Read the Codex. 10xp.

8. Explore all menu options. 10xp.

9. Purchase your first Tech Tree. 10xp.

10. Purchase your first Upgrade. 10xp.

Daily:

1. Study. (5) 10xp/hour.

2. Exercise. 10xp/hour.

3. Tinker. 10xp/hour.

Main:

1. Achieve legal emancipation. 10000xp.

2. Earn GED and leave school early. 10000xp.

3. Get to space. 50000xp.

4. Reach the moon. 10000xp.

5. Reach another planet. 10000xp.

6. Visit every planet in the solar system. 10000xp.

7. Leave the solar system. 10000xp.

8. Make contact with an alien race. 10000xp.

9. Get xeno pussy. 10000xp.

10. Survive. (15) 100xp/year.

Side:

1. Achieve immortality. 10000xp.

2. Solve world hunger. 10000xp.

3. Achieve world peace (or close enough). 10000xp.

4. Uplift humanity. 10000xp.

"Leon, are you okay?"

I grunted and opened one eye, finding myself looking up at Kelly's face, partially obscured by the view of her breasts. "Migraine. Just hit suddenly."

She shook her head, making a quiet, chiding sound. "You've been studying too much-it's a Saturday, you should have gone outside and gotten some air. You're probably dehydrated, too. I'll get you some water. Then, why don't you go lay down and take a nap?"

I considered the offer for a moment before nodding. It would give me time to go over the utterly ridiculous menu that had disappeared the moment I opened my eyes and stopped focusing on it. I'm not going crazy. I'm not.

"Thanks, Kel." I accepted the hand up from her lap pillow and stumbled my way from the rec-room to my bedroom, where I began stripping down. I was one of the lucky odd ones out in my year, who actually had a room to themselves.

Kelly joined me a moment later, pausing in the doorway for just a second as I kicked my shorts away, my shirt already off. "Here, water," she offered, moving closer. "Drink."

Knowing she would insist and not let up until I did, I took it and drained half of the cold water in one go, before climbing back into bed. A nap in the middle of the day sounded nice anyway, once I was done investigating the anomaly that was the menu.

Kelly pulled the curtains shut, casting the room into darkness. "I hope you feel better soon," she smiled, before quietly leaving the room and closing the door behind herself.

Staring up at the ceiling in the cool, dim room, I wondered how to get the menu back. As if summoned, which I imagined it actually was, it returned and I began to explore every section, starting with the Codex, followed by the Log. There, I found an entry on the menu itself, which combined with the information in the Log gave me enough information to put together what was going on.

The short version was that yes, I had been reincarnated. Not just to any old alternate Earth with a similar development to my own, but specifically to the Earth of the Mass Effect universe, over ninety years before the Charon mass relay was even discovered. I remembered enough of the story to be worried, but not enough of the details, especially the deep lore, to really know just how fucked I was other than 'reapers are coming.' For me, I had last seen anything related to 'Mass Effect' more than fifteen years ago. After all, in my world I died in 2054 at the age of seventy, only to be reborn in this world seemingly less than a day later by the calendar in the 2054 of this place.

As for the menu, it seemed to be one part reward, one part challenge. A reward for dying with positive karma, a challenge to see if I could course correct this place.

Every day, I would accrue one point, with which to purchase new tech trees from the shop, upgrade existing tech trees, or buy upgrades for myself. I could also do tasks, listed under Missions, to gain experience and use that experience to gain points, at a rate of 100 experience to 1 point. Some missions were repeatable and stackable, such as studying or exercising granting ten experience per hour, while others were cyclical on a calendar, such as the mission 'Survive,' which gave me 100 experience per year-or one point per year, when converted.

The tech trees I could buy from the shop were limited at the moment, but would add a new option every six months. From what I could tell, so far it seemed that the trees available came from other science-fiction settings. The shop was where I could buy upgrades, which would show up under the Upgrades menu.

Notes: first three tech trees and upgrades come at a 90% discount. New tech trees and upgrades become available every six months (excluding this month). You may only purchase ten upgrades and tech trees per year.

Tech Trees:

1. Mass Effect. -10 points.

2. Stargate. -10 points.

3. Marvel (Cinematic Universe). -10 points.

Upgrades:

1. Fast Learner. -2 points.

- Assimilate and understand knowledge faster. This includes things learned the mundane way and knowledge imparted from purchased tech trees.

2. Mechanical Savant. -2 points.

- You're the machine whisperer. You understand any mechanical or electronic object, how it works, and the methods of its construction just by looking under the hood, so to speak. Gaining access to something's innards or blueprints triggers this effect.

3. MacGyver's Apprentice. -2 points.

- You just have a knack for finding a way to jury-rig things. Scavenging, salvaging, improvisation, and bootstrapping all come easily to you.

Eyeing my choices and counting up my points, I realized that I had enough to buy all three upgrades and one option on the tech tree. I went ahead and bought the upgrades. I felt just a little different after, but not in any real way I could put my finger on. It wasn't like I could suddenly run faster or jump higher-there was no physically observable evidence that anything had changed. And yet, I knew I had.

Shaking my head, I considered the three tech trees available. If this was real, and it seemed to be, then I wanted them all.

Given that I was in the Mass Effect universe, having a head start on their tech would be very nice. I could find ways to introduce it and get humanity on par with the other big races much faster.

The problem with that was that everything in the Mass Effect universe operated off of ME tech derived from Element Zero and its effects… and the Reapers were at the top of the food chain, there. The killer AIs had had millions of years to get good with the tech and to understand or predict most of the potential developments that would come from it. It was predictable. Expected. Accounted for. And while it would be nice to have, it wasn't a necessity right now. Especially with no access to eezo.

Stargate tech, on the other hand, had me salivating at the potential uses. I'd loved the series and devoured more content than I had for Mass Effect.

FTL that didn't require eezo or rely on the mass relays. Soft scifi tech like inertia dampeners and artificial gravity that would make space travel workable. Particle beams and other energy weapons, railguns, nukes, super nukes, and other things that again, didn't use eezo-in fact, most of them used mundane materials. Cloning, human enhancement including inducing psionic powers, genetic engineering. On the higher end of the tech tree, teleportation and energy to matter replicators that could just create whatever you wanted.

The biggest issue there though was that a lot of that tech required some prerequisites that I wasn't sure existed in this universe. Naquadah, for instance-the wonder mineral that was their equivalent to Element Zero. However… There were some loopholes. For instance, a replicator could make naquadah, and didn't need to be made from or powered by naquadah to do so. It was just a matter of getting that high on the tech tree. Which meant it wasn't immediately useful.

No, the reward for 'most immediately useful' tech tree went to the MCU tree, if it held what I thought it did. Tony Stark built a suit of powered armor and a clean energy source in a cave from scraps-using early 2000s tech and nothing particularly rare to do it. If I could get my hands on a, what was it called again? An arc reactor, then I could use that to bootstrap whatever tech I made. And that was at the low end of that tree, if I was right.

Clean, renewable energy. Power armor. Weapons and flight that didn't run off of hydrocarbons or any special snowflake elements and which could be built in a garage with some basic tools. Artificial Intelligence.

I made my choice.

There was no headache this time. Just a steady flow of information into my brain as I absorbed years of material. Mundane science, chemistry, medicine, physics, and more. Multiple doctorates worth of knowledge, and better yet, practical knowledge from experience downloaded straight into my brain.

My mouth fell open as I boggled.

I had thought that I would be getting something like what Tony Stark had known, and I was right… but also so very wrong. I hadn't anticipated just how wide the scope of what I'd bought was. Not only did I have Stark's know-how and experience up to the point that he built his first few iterations of the Iron Man suit-up through about the first movie, if I remembered correctly-but I also had Bruce Banner's knowledge, which included far more than just what he knew on gamma radiation. Erik Selvig's knowledge of theoretical astrophysics. Abraham Erskine's knowledge of the super soldier serum and vita radiation. Hank Pym's knowledge of the Pym particle. The knowledge of not one, not two, but three iterations of Peter Parker, the knowledge of how their various radioactive spiders were made…

And as it poured in, my upgrades dissected the knowledge and fed me ideas on how to use it. For instance, MacGyver told me that everything I'd need to build a mark 1 arc reactor could be found in a junk yard.

Okay, hang on. Just… just hold on, I pumped the brakes on my sudden enthusiasm to go out and start tearing apart things.

I needed to verify my newfound knowledge and a plan to do it. The easiest way would, of course, be to actually build something-and the arc reactor was stupidly simple, so that was the way I was leaning. But I would need tools and a workshop, and somewhere to keep whatever I made.

With the right parts and tools, I could build one in a couple of hours. It's just after noon, so I've got the rest of the day.

There was a shed behind the orphanage where they kept the gardening tools, lawnmower, and other tools-it was a place every orphan here knew well, as we'd all taken our turns doing various chores and light handiwork around the place. It would do well as a source of a few tools and a place to make my first project.

Assuming it works, I mused as I got out of bed and began getting dressed. Opening the top drawer of my dresser, I pulled a taped envelope off the bottom of it and counted my money, coming up with a couple hundred dollars.

I took the elevator down and with that, I hit the streets of Miami to go collect some junk.

Eventually, I got back to the orphanage, pushing a shopping cart full of junk (the cart having been left abandoned on the side of the road near a large apartment block, with many others just like it). I opened up the shed and pushed the cart inside. Turning on the air conditioner, I began clearing off a table as the room cooled down to a bearable temperature.

Once I had a clear space, I began setting up my basic lab. Some old ceramic flower pots and a couple of cinder blocks to shield the table from the heat made for a poor man's crucible-and I was a poor man, so it was the best I could do. The melting point of palladium was 2830.82 F, while ceramic could withstand around 3000 F. I had bought a couple of small bottles of acetylene and oxygen and a small torch, and a bit of work got what I needed to actually heat the palladium.

After preparing the crucible, I took out mallet, a cloth sack, and a small stack of ceramic pots from the shopping cart, smashed them into dust, and poured them into a cast iron pot. When I finished with the crucible, I pulled out a catalytic converter I had ripped off of an old junk car in the junkyard and paid $50 for and disassembled it, taking out the palladium and dropping it into my crucible.

I took a few minutes to flatten out and compact the dust, then used a cup to put a ring into it. From there, over the next half hour, I melted down enough palladium into a crucible cup to fill the ring, poured it into the mold I had made, then waited for it to cool. While that settled, I began cutting lengths of unshielded, twisted copper wire off the little spool I'd bought. Then, I got the ring out, cleaned and smoothed it up, and moved on to the next step.

It was only a little over an hour later that I turned on the switch that sent power from a nine volt battery to the reactor. Presented with power, it reacted and began to glow, producing its own power.

"Beautiful." My heart clenched in my chest as the reality of what I had done set in. The reality of my situation. The potential danger… and potential rewards. It was simultaneously the most terrified and most excited I had ever been, in either life.

I took a few minutes moving the broken parts and debris back into the buggy, while leaving the tools and things I could reuse later. Then, I shut off everything and closed up, before heading inside. After a quick bite to eat and a shower, I got to bed.

I lay there staring at the ceiling as the orphanage grew quiet. I began putting together a mental list of things I could make and what order I needed to make them in. Inexpensive things that would let me work my way up to bigger and better things.

I could go for repulsors immediately, with just a few extra parts. But that doesn't get me that much. Sure, they can be used for other things than just flight and weapons-basically anything that requires a cutting tool or generating heat. So a good general tool to add to my kit, but not something leaps and bounds ahead. No, what I really want is the mini-computer and HUD Stark built into his first true Iron Man suit, and the AI running on it. A computer small enough to run the suit, an AI, and all the shit required for that HUD…

We had small computers right now. Maybe even computers fast enough, with enough storage and processing power to run a Stark AI. But that was going to be expensive. A couple grand, at least. Money I didn't have. I'd also need an actual lab and equipment I didn't have, to make anything too complex.

Hang on. I bet I could go to the dump and find a couple of old computers that have been thrown out. Maybe some laptops. A laptop with a busted display is still a laptop. I could rig up a new display interface-I just need the thing to process. A couple of those, a couple of phones-because people throw away perfectly good older phones all the time, and they still have nice screens and stuff. I could connect them to run in parallel. A laser out of any older gaming platform is basically a small cutting laser if it's got enough juice. Some small motors and a phone, a box to put them in, and some other things and I could build a small 3D printer for milling metal. I could make a better crucible with repulsors and more ceramic pots. I could make… a series of crucibles, actually. A self-contained processing unit that could take anything I fed it, separate it by melting point, and produce bars of whatever metal comes out based on melting point. As for feeding it raw materials, well, there are lots of old, abandoned cars just sitting around in abandoned junkyards. Why not… find one of those abandoned junkyards and take it over? Build a small lab there and start producing raw materials?

I fell asleep to thoughts of where I could find something like that within reach of the orphanage.

Places like that are dangerous, though. Druggies, tweakers, and homeless congregate there to strip out metal to sell. So I'd better have some protection when I go.

The next morning, I got up and checked my menu. I had apparently earned three more points the day before and had gotten another today, and a check showed that completed missions had their own section in the log and moved there the day after they were done, instead of cluttering up the mission list.

Seeing as my dailies hadn't changed, except to add 'gather resources,' I got up and went down for breakfast. After that, I went out for a morning jog on the beach and then a swim-something I did pretty regularly, but not often enough to be called a routine. I made up my mind to change that here and now, since I was being rewarded in experience for it. It would mean changing my schedule a little to get up earlier, but that was fine.

Once I was finished with that and cleaned up, I headed out into the city to get started gathering materials before the heat of the day truly caught up to me. I snagged another metal buggy and made my way to the landfill. I'd brought a pair of dykes just for this and quickly cut a hole in the fence, well away from the front. From there, the hunt was on.

Links to my stuff.

Sine's Dumping Ground for Decommissioned Projects.

Fanfic

Seigyou Tensei - Legitimately Employed Reincarnation (Mushoku Tensei SI). How I Became the Male Equivalent of a JK (SI multi-fusion). How I Spent My DK Days in Other Worlds (SI multi-cross). Essentially KonoSuba (KonoSuba). Just the Essentials (Harry Potter/Essence CYOA SI). Puella Magi American Sensei (Meguca lewds). Conjunction (Ranma 1/2/Sailor Moon). Naruto, but it's Slut Ninjas (Naruto AU). Space Wizard (Star Wars 3999 BBY). Late Bloomer (MHA). Mr. Saturday Night Special (Worm). Predatory (Worm/Marvel). Signal to Noise (Worm) (Complete). A Young Girls Outer Heaven (Youjo Senki/Tanya the Evil). When 'Summon Servant' Fails Successfully (FATE Expys). Wandering Prince (A:tLA, Zuko SI).

Original

Red Light Cultivation (Original/Xianxia). Sexy Sentai Six! (Original) On Trackless Seas (lewd space opera). Life 2.0 (alt-history Inspired Inventor lite). Desperate Incelfs (Lewd Baalbuddy-style incelf action). Monster Girl Invasion (pseudo-MGE). Noble Shard (worm).

My subscribestar

. Commissions by Subscribestar or , $10/1k words.

Now with Discord!

Uninspired

Mass Effect, Inspired Inventor

Leon Reynolds. Experience: 0xp. Points: 17.

Note: first three tech trees and upgrades come at a 90% discount. New tech trees and upgrades become available every six months.

Tech Trees:

1. Mass Effect. -10 points.

2. Stargate. -10 points.

The previous week felt like it just crawled by, when all I wanted to do was make cool shit. Especially when I actually made progress Sunday, before having to resume classes. Being forced into eight hours of classes that I was so far ahead of before the knowledge download that I had used them just for an extended study hall to focus on the subjects I didn't know well was a living hell. Compared to making an arc reactor Saturday and cleaning up two laptops and connecting them in parallel to turn them into a single, better, functioning computer spending only five hours a day for the rest of the week coding a new operating system and an hour scavenging for parts had felt like I was just… dragging ass. Wasting time.

By Tuesday, I had already begun working on the process of getting the tests to take my GED and test out. I knew enough of literally everything else that even if I completely flunked the local history, I'd be fine. With any luck, by the end of next week I'd have those tests finished. Then, attending class would just be a formality until I got the results back. I had already spoken with a few of the people running the orphanage and, until I turned 18, I was free to stay here regardless of whether I was enrolled or not. That wouldn't be an issue in a year, when I could file for emancipation. In the meantime, it would give me a year of time where I could build up and advance my tech base.

Now that it was Saturday again, and I had gathered enough points during the week to buy another tech tree, I went ahead and picked the option for Mass Effect.

Why get that when I could get Stargate and all of its goodness instead? Simple, really. I'd realized, upon tearing those two laptops down to clean them up, verify their components worked, and connect them that the tech here may have been similar in form and function to what I was used to in my first world, and could even plausibly be considered a potential logical progression forward from the time I died, there were enough differences between what was, what I knew from my world, and what the MCU tree had given me that a better understanding of the local tech base would actually speed things along.

No need to reinvent the wheel when we had perfectly good working wheels right here.

Once I got through assimilating the new information and meshing it with what I already knew, I could see several places where I could've done things more efficiently when I was making and coding my new computer. Sure, it was good enough for now, but I was already making notes for the future.

"So, what are you doing today?"

Looking over at Kelly standing in my doorway, and briefly getting distracted by toned stomach and tits (and scolding myself for perving on a young girl), I began getting dressed. I considered telling her the truth, but honestly, I'd rather keep everything under my hat until I was ready. So, I lied my ass off.

"Going job hunting. I'm going to see if I can find something to do to make some money under the table, in my free time. Mow yards or something like that.

"You know you don't have to, right?" she asked, not even bothering to hide the fact that she had watched me dress the entire time, the little pervert.

"No, but I like having money, so that means working if I want it."

She hummed, considering that, and smiled. "Alright. Have fun. And hey, maybe you can take me out to a movie with some of that money later?"

"Sounds fun," I nodded, pulling on my shoes as she turned and left.

Once she was gone, I made my way down to the shed. I already had all the pieces I needed, so I fired up the crucible and made two more, much smaller rings. Once they cooled and I got to work couling copper and solder it together.

Maybe I should've invited Kelly along. An extra set of hands really cut down on the time required.

The finished product was roughly the size of a quarter in width and an inch thick. With those done, I began putting together a very small repulsor-the aperture where it would fire from no larger than a dime. Following that, I used a couple of grips and trigger groups taken from some broken airsoft pistols I'd found in the landfill, built a custom frame to house the reactor and repulsor from scrap metal, and wired in a dial for power output. A couple of salvaged red laser pointers and some simple iron sights would allow for easy aiming.

The final product came out looking only vaguely gun-like. More like if someone had taken a pistol and cut off everything forward of the trigger well. Putting them away, I made my way to a local park and did some quick tests in the woods where no one would see, blowing chunks out of trees and adjusting the lasers until they were accurate.

Then, it was another trip to the same junkyard. This time, I came away rolling an older dirt bike. It was missing the motor, but the previous owner had been kind enough to leave everything else. I set to work making another small arc reactor, then when that was finished, removed the unnecessary components from the bike and built a simple electric motor. By lunch time, I was flying down road laughing (with no helmet, because I didn't actually have one) as I made my way out to where satellite photos from the map app on my school issued tablet showed there was an old, abandoned junkyard.

The road in was gated and locked, but an application of my repulsor pistol blasted the lock to pieces and I was free to enter. I drove slowly through the place, exploring all of the little twists and turns between stacks of crushed vehicles, looking for a good spot to set up. I found what I was looking for in a roughly square area deep in the yard, around a blind corner that would be impossible to see from the road. Satisfied for now, I went back to the city, stopping and buying an old helmet from a flea market for pretty cheap before I went back to the shed.

That evening, I started work on a fairly simple robot and dumb AI to drive it, using a couple of old phones and a bunch of cameras sourced from more phones. It would probably take another week to get a functional bot that could cut scrap off with a laser or small repulsor and carry it to a hopper to be broken down, and make it smart enough to not try to disassemble living things or feed in anything but metal, but I didn't mind terribly much. Once I got the bot and the auto-crucible going, I'd be a step closer to my goals. And it would cut down on time needed to build things by hand by automating much of the disassembly process.

"Mr. Reynolds, the principal would like to see you."

Kelly and I exchanged a confused look, before I shrugged and she hurried into our first class for the day, two weeks after I had finished the auto-crucible project-which itself had taken months to complete. I had, unfortunately, been optimistic in my estimations of the timeframe to complete that project. Very optimistic. The problem was that, while the bot itself had been easy enough to build, the crucible part required a lot more grunt work. Heavy lifting and pushing things into place, mostly. Then, there was getting it into place and setting everything up covertly. Followed by testing, having things break, having to fix it and figure out why it broke (shitty sub-standard components), and so on until I had a working project. It had been a nightmare doing everything solo.

A series frustrating setbacks, but something I could deal with.

Making my way to the elevator, I took it to the top, and the administrative facilities there. I found the main office quickly and was shortly seated before the principal-a whip thin, very stern looking mid-40s woman, wearing respectable, conservative clothes that had (unfortunately) gone out of style some time early in my first life unless you were part of a very religious church. These days, any skirt past the knee was an anachronism or cosplay.

"Ma'am," I sent her a smile as I entered. "How's your day going so far?"

She paused briefly, before her frown faltered and shifted into something a bit more cordial. "Well, thank you for asking, Mr. Reynolds. I'll keep this brief." Reaching into a drawer, she pulled out a set of papers and passed them over, across the desk. "The results of your tests… and your GED. Congratulations. Your mandatory schooling is officially complete. Though I would have preferred to hand you a diploma myself, with your scores I don't believe you need one. Perfect scores in everything but history, and that one was close enough. They should be sufficient to get you into any university of your choosing on an academic scholarship-a free ride."

"Thank you, Mrs. Black."

"What are your plans, now that you no longer have to attend classes? Certainly not to loiter and let a mind that bright sit idle."

I shook my head. "Maybe a summer job. Something under the table. Mowing lawns or something. I could use the money," I shrugged, going for my go-to lie to explain where I went/would be going during the day.

"And have you put any thought towards what university you'll be attending?"

"Why would I?" The woman looked flummoxed and I explained, "I don't need one. If I want to learn something specific, I could just take an online class, or buy a course book for that subject and teach myself. It's what I've been doing. Once I emancipate myself next year, I'll see about investing some of the money my parents left to me. According to the statements I've been getting mailed from the firm managing the estate, I've got a nice little nest egg. With careful management, I shouldn't need to ever actually work in a menial job."

"A talent like yours shouldn't go to waste."

"It won't. But I don't need some university to give me a piece of paper that says I'm qualified for something. Besides, most places where real talent is required, they're looking at years of experience and an ability to demonstrate practical knowledge, or a willingness to learn, not a degree. In fact, they've been turning away people with just a degree for decades now, because all they were getting was educated idiots. You either need actual experience in a field, or you need to demonstrate proficiency during an interview. And since I'm not concerned about impressing anyone…" I trailed off and shrugged.

The principal sighed, reaching up and pulling off her glasses to rub at her temples. "I just don't want to see you waste your life. Wind up with no choices and join some gang, or end up in prison."

"I'll be fine. But I appreciate the worry. Thank you." Standing up and tucking my papers into my back pocket, I said, "I'll get out of your hair. I need to do some job hunting."

"Very well. I wish good luck, Mr. Reynolds."

With that, I left the office and made my way back to my dorm room. I wouldn't be needing my school books anymore, so I took a few moments to clear out my backpack and put those where I would remember to take them and turn them in at some point. Sitting down on my bed, I wondered what to do next. I opened my menu to peruse the options there.

Leon Reynolds. Experience: 10010xp. Points: 204.

Tech Trees:

1. Terminator. -100 points.

2. Big Hero 6 (Movie Universe). -100 points.

3. Cyberpunk. -100 points.

4. Mass Effect II. -100 points.

5. Stargate II. -100 points.

6. Marvel (Cinematic Universe) II. -100 points.

Upgrades:

1. Nimble Fingers. -20 points.

- You're good with your hands. Very good. Increase all aspects of manual dexterity. Anything that can be done by hand is faster, more precise, and easier for you than it would otherwise be for others.

2. Crash Override. -20 points.

- You've leveraged your knowledge of computers and networks into a hacking ability that skips the border of absurdity on its way straight to Hollywood. If it's electronic, you can hack it, crack it, and make it jump through hoops. But hacking is eight parts preparation, one part action, one part letting your tools do the work for you. You also gain bonuses to physically constructing and coding anything you might need to hack a system.

3. Bishop Administrator. -20 points.

- Multitasking: mostly yes. Your ability to multitask is greatly increased, but you're still only human-you can only process what your senses perceive, only think as fast as your mind allows, and only act upon as much as you have limbs for. But you've become very good at juggling several things at once.

Tech Tree

1. Mass Effect I.

2. Stargate I.

3. Marvel (Cinematic Universe) I.

Upgrades

1. Fast Learner.

2. Mechanical Savant.

3. MacGyver's Apprentice.

I had points and I had options. Too many options and not enough points. And six months before I got anything new. Though, I had found out that if I bought a tech tree, I didn't have to wait months for the next step of that tree to appear-it became available immediately. So, theoretically, if I had points, I could go from step I up through however many iterations I had the points for pretty much immediately.

So, I'll need to prioritize. Upgrades directly affect me and how fast, or how much, I can build. All of those for sure, then. That leaves me with 144 points. Only enough for one tree. So… do I want to go deeper into one of the three I already have, or wider to expand what I can do?

That was a tough one, honestly.

The MCU tree alone had given me access to nearly everything that would have been on Earth in the MCU timeline as of the first few movies, from what I could tell. The Stargate tree gave me a bunch of simpler Goa'uld tech and early Earth tech-which was, honestly, decades behind what I got from the MCU tree alone. The Mass Effect tree gave me everything on my current Earth at the moment and a good grasp of basic, early mass effect tech-the simple stuff one could do with eezo.

I was pretty sure I knew exactly what I'd be getting with the Terminator tree. At the least, the ability to produce a T-800 or maybe even a T-900, the chips needed, and the AI to run it-the last of which I wouldn't be using, because I wasn't dumb enough to make a murder AI, especially not in a universe where it seemed like every single AI ever made went rogue. No, if I was making AI, I was going to take the time to make sure it was absolutely loyal and saw humanity, and me specifically, as the center of its world.

Big Hero 6 I wasn't sure on. I felt like I knew the name, but I was drawing a blank. It seemed like it was something lost to time in my memories. Which made it a mystery box.

Cyberpunk, I sort of vaguely remembered-something about a crappy game and an anime with a sexy blue gun gremlin. I seemed to recall it revolved around a world with a lot in the way of cybernetic enhancements, though.

So… murderbots I don't have the facilities to make, the mystery box, or cybernetics I don't have the facilities to make or install. Or going deeper into a known tech tree. Alternately, I hold onto my points and save them until next month, when I get more options.

I sighed and focused on the mystery box. Fuck it. I can get the other two later. Let's see what the hell this is.

I confirmed my purchases and watched my points dwindle down to a mere 44. Knowledge trickled into my brain and I hummed as I considered what I was getting. The world appeared to be a few years behind this one-closer to the mid-2020s, early 2030s really. At least, their general tech level. But there were several branches of wundertech that were immediately available to me. Dumb AI, streamlined 3D printing, machining, and assembly, microbots, a neural interface, advanced chemical fabrication in a small form factor, plasma cutters, magnetic driven wheels, even the beginnings of some sort of portal tech.

Flopping back on my bed, I let my mind work over the possibilities and grinned. Neural interface plus Bishop Administrator plus microbots equals win. An AI running microbots equipped with micro-sized arc reactors powering them, micro-sized plasma cutters and repulsors, with small chemical fabricators doing chemical treatment one piece at a time, and an automatic smelter to recycle crap into raw materials, creating a ridiculously efficient assembly line. I could remove the need for so many tools and larger pieces of equipment.

There was just one small problem…

I didn't have the lab or equipment necessary to build most of it. I could bootstrap a bit and build a better 3D printer. I could probably start turning out microbots with those specifications, minus the chemical fabricator-chemfabber? I was already most of the way through making a cobbled together piece of crap that would run my first AI, so I could give it something to run. I might even be able to build the neural interface, by substituting a few parts here and there and MacGyvering a few things.

But I didn't have anywhere to put them! How damn frustrating is that shit?! I could probably do most of it, but even microbots take up space-especially in the quantities I'm going to need. And space requires land. I'd need to wait until I got access to my home again to have a truly secure lab. Not that anywhere would truly be 'secure' if someone found out what I'm making and decided they wanted a piece. The moon or Mars maybe, or the bottom of the ocean.

Shaking my head, I made to push off the bed, only to pause as several things came together quickly.

Those 3D printers can do everything needed to produce new circuit boards and all the things that go in and on them with raw materials… which I have access to, in the junkyard, if I recycle some crap. There's also a lot of metal in the junkyard. A lot of good steel. It wouldn't be hard at all to make a few molds and start turning out sheets of recycled steel. I could then weld them together into a building. Microbots could dig out a hole under the junkyard, shore it up with more steel, and make a temporary factory. From there, focus on recycling everything in there while making the parts needed to build a Goa'uld force field-with a lot of MacGyvering to make it work. Then, custom build better computers to run everything. Once that upgrade is done, move everything underwater, under a force field. Actually, I could build a life support system so I could visit in person. Oh my fuck, this might actually be doable!

I jumped out of bed and grabbed my backpack. I hit the kitchen and made myself a couple of sandwiches and snagged a couple of bottles of water, before heading out. I made my way into the shed to get to work on the part I could finish the fastest alone, thanks to my new upgrades.

It was just after lunch time when I finished going through the initial tests of the new system and the intelligence running on it. Finally, I decided to just ask it what it thought. Or her, rather.

"Alright, Alpha, how's everything look?"

"It could be better, sir," the AI-well, VI really-complained. "I can feel the fans straining and my circuits heating up already."

"Oh, relax. You'll be fine, you big baby. Give it some time and you'll be migrated into something better," I promised. "How's the connection to my phone?"

"Good enough, sir."

"Excellent." Opening my backpack, I slid the two connected laptops running off of an arc reactor into it and pulled it on. "We're going for a ride."

"Oh dear," the AI muttered from the phone in my breast pocket as I pulled on my helmet and slid onto my bike.

A short ride later, we pulled into the junkyard and made our way back to where the partially built auto-crucible waited. Parking the bike, I hung the backpack off of it and got to work moving things around and whacking them into shape.

"Sir, I highly advise getting a tetanus shot if you plan to proceed."

"Oh har de har har," I rolled my eyes. "I should make you turn the sass down. Look, this is all temporary. Things I need to use to build the tools needed to build the tools to build the tools. Give me some time and they'll be cleared out in favor of an underground facility, once I've got you some microbots to work with."

"Then I suppose I should make sure it is at least up to code. I'll begin doing research on the proper methods of underground construction-"

" Temporary, Alpha. Keep that in mind. Whatever you build here is going to go down as soon as we have a force field and life support."

"Very well, sir."

Links to my stuff.

Sine's Dumping Ground for Decommissioned Projects.

Fanfic

Original

My subscribestar

. Commissions by Subscribestar or , $10/1k words.

Now with Discord!

Uninspired

Mass Effect, Inspired Inventor

Leon Reynolds. Experience: 10100xp. Points: 431.

Tech Trees:

1. The Expanse. -100 points.

2. Horizon (Game). -100 points.

3. Battle Angel Alita (Manga). -100 points.

4. Terminator. -100 points.

5. Cyberpunk. -100 points.

6. Mass Effect II. -100 points.

7. Stargate II. -100 points.

8. Marvel (Cinematic Universe) II. -100 points.

Upgrades:

1. Sell By. -20 points.

- You can now choose to sell Tech Trees or Upgrades you don't want, or get a refund on one you've already bought. Warning: selling off a tech tree or upgrade will forever remove it and you will be unable to purchase it later.

2. Neural Mancer. -20 points.

- You have developed a mastery of neural interface link technology. You've honed your mind to razor sharpness, with a focus and clarity of thought like a Tibetan monk. When using a neural link, your thoughts become reality. Technology you control through it is treated as an extension of your body. Stacks with: Mechanical Savant, Nimble Fingers, Bishop Administrator.

3. CAD Master. -20 points.

- You have achieved mastery of CAD software. You can now directly input thoughts to CAD blueprints and make modifications at the speed of thought. Stacks with Neural Mancer when using a neural interface.

Tech Tree

1. Mass Effect I.

2. Stargate I.

3. Marvel (Cinematic Universe) I.

4. Big Hero 6 (Movie Universe) Max.

Upgrades

1. Fast Learner.

2. Mechanical Savant.

3. MacGyver's Apprentice.

4. Nimble Fingers.

5. Crash Override.

6. Bishop Administrator.

I sighed as I flopped down on top of my bed. My bed, in my house, on my land-not the orphanage. After a year of waiting to turn 16, and then a couple of months more for the paperwork to process, then speak to a judge and plead my case for why I should be allowed to emancipate myself, followed by a week straight waiting for the cleaning company to go through the house and clean everything and make it livable again, I had finally done it. And now, I was here. In my family's home. Alone.

I had said goodbye to my few friends at St. Nicholas. I might go check on them eventually, but for now, I had other things to focus on.

"Right. That's enough lazing around. Send it over, Alpha," I instructed, forcing myself to my feet and out of the room that had originally belonged to my parents in this world. I made my way downstairs, to the sliding glass door leading to the patio and the in-ground pool.

The roar of repulsor engines flared above as something large came to a hovering stop and lowered itself down on a set of retractable legs, distributing its weight so it didn't crack the cement. Looking at the stealth cargo drone, I waved my hand towards the camera on the rear and the back hatch lowered into a ramp. The thing was about the size of a large van. All sharp angles meant to remove any radar pattern it might have, much like the F-117, and painted in a black that seemed to eat light and definitely ate radar and lidar.

From inside, a drone on rubber tracks rolled out, carrying a solid black cube-all microbots, clinging together in a cube formation to protect the contents of the cube. I directed it inside, to the stairs leading down to the basement. The tracked bot stopped and the microbots came to life, lifting off the cart and scurrying downstairs like an ungodly large spider. Once downstairs, they came to rest in the far corner of the room and set down their payload, before linking up and forming a black pillar beside it. What they had been protecting was a black rectangular cube exactly six feet tall, by three feet wide and deep. On the front, in the center, were a trio of brightly glowing arc reactors. Set above that was a flat glass lens.

The lens flared to life and a hologram sprang into being in the middle of the room-a young, slim elf girl with long blonde hair, wearing a very conservative black dress and looking very prim indeed. Well, I say young-she looked about my age. "Greetings, master Reynolds."

"Alpha, I've told you to call me Leon," I grumbled at the VI, shaking my head. From above, I heard the back door close and the roar of the cargo drone taking off again. Sitting down in the big computer chair I'd had installed down here, along with a desk, I asked, "How are we looking?"

A screen popped into being beside the holographic maid, showing the underwater factory, my current stock of raw materials, and progress being made towards cleaning out another abandoned junkyard-one of many, where the country's collection of gasoline burning vehicles had been sent when someone had forced through legislation to try to force electric vehicles on people… and where those EVs had ended up when it proved cheaper to buy a new one than replace the battery when it went out after ten years of service. The batteries, the materials for which were mined in the third world, in the most toxic places on Earth. Which, when it finally came to light and public sentiment finally shifted again, tanked the EV market and brought a return of petroleum-based vehicles-though at least this time, they were a bit cleaner burning than the ones that came before them.

My eyes flicked to a screen where microbots were finishing up construction of a series of large, boxy structures. Each of them looked to be roughly the size of a train car, and made entirely of steel. I could make out several repulsors along the body that would act as maneuvering thrusters, each set in place such that it could swivel and turn as needed to change the angle of its thrust. Each one had six hatches, one for each side, and clamps for docking so that they could be connected in a number of configurations.

Inside of most of them, I knew was everything needed to make each livable and make reentry if need be. Power in the form of multiple, redundant arc reactors. Life support. Inertial dampeners and artificial gravity. Shields. A supply of water and water recycling capability. Two single occupancy flip down padded benches that could be used as beds. A small room with a toilet/sink/shower. Every one of those could sustain life for the entire network of containers that they would be connected to and supply power, life support, water, and shielding. I wasn't taking any chances of anyone being stranded up there.

Some containers were more specialized. There were farming containers, which held live soil, seeds, irrigation systems, lighting, and small bots to harvest whatever was grown-year round. There were containers full of just fresh water, and some with small environments full of fish, plants, and other aquatic life. Still others with soil and grass, vegetables, chickens, and rabbits. Two were dedicated to putting Alpha into space and keeping a permanent presence there. Then, of course, there were the ones that were just cargo containers, carrying hundreds of small missiles, each propelled by repulsors and filled with microbots equipped for working in space. I'd be shooting those into the asteroid belt and turning them into my own personal mining force shortly. Finally, there was a container full of more missiles, each carrying a small, arc reactor powered satellite. Those would be bound for every planet in the system, and points in between, creating the first and only real time subspace communications link across the solar system.

It was everything someone would want to make an orbital station, a colony on the moon, or in this case a station in the L1 Lagrange point and enough shuttles to ferry people back and forth. And it was where Alpha and I would be living for the month of September.

"Ahead of schedule, sir," Alpha summarized. "The demonstration modules are prepared to send to NASA and the ESA and I've filed for the patents already and… quietly slipped in the back door and made sure they were approved in a timely manner."

"Good girl, Alpha," I grinned. "And the second shipment, with the security…?"

"Inbound now, sir. ETA, 2 minutes. I'll have it set up in fifteen."

"Excellent. So, tell me, how would you feel about having a body?" I asked, kicking the chair and spinning around.

"A physical body, sir?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. I knew I hadn't programmed her to have emotions, but the VI made a good show of emulating them when it was appropriate.

"That's right," I confirmed. "Organic flesh over a metal endoskeleton. Or maybe something different. Not sure yet. What do you think?"

She was silent for a few moments as she considered-what might as well be hours given her clock speed. Finally, she nodded. "It would allow me to better perform my job, master Reynolds. I would not just be a digital presence capable of assisting you in your online needs, but a physical one as well, capable of protecting you should the need arise."

"Alrighty." I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes, opening my menu. Going over my list of options, I first bought the available upgrades. Then, I hummed as I tried to remember what the new things were from.

Alita, I actually recognize. Whole lot of cybernetics and future tech in a dystopia where shit went bad. But the big takeaway from that was being able to move someone into a fully robotic body. It's the grandmother to what Cyberpunk was based on. Definitely a good choice, considering how much other shit is in the setting.

Horizon was the one with the fugly character playing Assassin's Creed against robot dinosaurs. Something something robot apocalypse wiped out all organic life on Earth, the robot dinosaurs brought it back. That's basically 'terraforming, the tech tree.' Definitely want it at some point, but it won't be immediately useful. On the other hand, terraforming takes time, so having it available ASAP would get me a jump on that.… But I could wait a year or two.

The Expanse… uh… bland 'hard scifi' setting with some magic space rock shit that created a space zombie plague. Nope! Fuck that noise.

Putting my new upgrade to use, I sold off The Expanse for 100 points, giving me a total of 471. Eventually, I gave in and made my choices: Stargate II, MCU II, Battle Angel Alita, and Terminator. The first two, because I wanted to push on up those tech trees and get to the better tech designs to crib notes from, the other two to give me more options.

Over the course of the next few minutes, the information poured in and settled in my brain. I whistled quietly at the sheer possibilities I had at my fingertips. Then, I reached out and pulled on the neural interface band laying on top of my desk and brought up my custom CAD software.

I began with the basic design for a T-900, then began making modifications. Changing out the nuclear power supply for an arc reactor. Upgrading most of the chips used to crystal tech now that I could make it (and that thought spawned a second CAD window to begin designing something to fabricate crystal tech). Upgrading all of the connections for the synthetic flesh so Alpha would actually feel it, then upgrading the synth flesh itself to make it functionally identical to human flesh, and adding some artificial organs to digest food and support her bio-synth flesh. On and on it went, planning out the requirements to give my robo maid a body.

When I was finished with that, I gave Alpha the okay to begin ordering what we needed and start construction. Then, I began designing large upgrades to my computing power, now that I had a method to produce Stargate's crystal tech, followed by new and better code to make it work, and an upgrade to Alpha to make her compatible when I migrated her over.

With the upgrade to MCU II, I now had access to the upgraded arc reactor and the knowledge of how to make Stark's artificial element, 'badassium.' I put in the plans for how to make that and bumped the priority of replacing our current stock of arc reactors up in the build order.

I had enough know how now to build a basic Stargate hyperdrive without naquadah. According to my math, it would be inefficient as hell, but it was still FTL-and any FTL is better than no FTL. So, I plugged in the design for that and began making a small ship around it. Well, less a ship, more a drone. Something that Alpha could remote pilot in short hops around the solar system to test and make sure it worked, before I ever set foot on one. But with a month to go, and Alpha handling the testing… hell, we could have a working model ready by time time we're ready for liftoff. Hell yes!

And with more knowledge under my belt, I finally felt safe experimenting with the two super soldier formulas I had on hand. I had Alpha put in orders for the chemicals for those, along with a request for spiders to test it on/finish the spider specific one. Designing a vita chamber was easy, considering the tech was WWII era stuff and could be greatly improved upon and brought up to modern standards.

However, I just had one qualm with using the Erskine formula now. Namely, while I hadn't gotten it by buying the second level of the Stargate tree, I was pretty sure what I wanted would be in the third or fourth level. Specifically, I remembered that during the SG-1 days, Anubis had made himself a clone body and enhanced it up to about a hair away from ascension, but found a way to keep it stable and holding at that-giving the ascended/descended Goa'uld a human body capable of some absolute bullshit. Telepathy, telekinesis, healing, force fields, and more.

The thing is, Erskine's formula enhances what's already there. A tiny manlet with a lot of spunk and determination gained at least a foot of height and twice his body mass in muscle, preternatural reflexes, and beyond peak human strength. What would happen if I took the spider formula (the one developed by Oscorp, in the Andrew Garfield version), enhanced my body using Anubis's tech, then took Erskine's formula?

I decided to shelve that project for now until I could dump more points into Stargate tech and find out.

Missions

Main:

1. Get to space. 50000xp.

2. Reach the moon. 10000xp.

3. Reach another planet. 10000xp.

4. Visit every planet in the solar system. 10000xp.

5. Leave the solar system. 10000xp.

6. Make contact with an alien race. 10000xp.

7. Get xeno pussy. 10000xp.

8. Survive. (16) 100xp/year.

"Wooo!"

I laughed, watching the holographic display of my surroundings as I broke atmosphere and kept going, on course for the moon. The display showed the tracks for over fifty containers behind me, which quickly filled with hundreds more tracks in different colors-green for me, blue for my future space station, yellow for comm buoys, and red for mining assets.

"We're out of atmosphere, sir," Alpha reported.

"We made it," I chuckled, watching the display as we began picking up multiple hails on just about every band imaginable, from every government on Earth (and Luna) with the capability to detect our launch-which was the US, Europe, and Armstrong Outpost. That last one, I actually answered, because we were heading their way.

The hologram shifted, displaying video and audio from the inside of a control room, where several people in the background were talking very loudly in frantic tones. They shut up when they saw me sitting there with a projection of Alpha on the screen beside me, before an older black man moved into frame. Looking at the two of us, he frowned. "I believe you children have the wrong channel-"

"No, we're reading you loud and clear. We are the intended target of your transmission, mister…?"

" Governor Brown. And you are?"

"We are the crew of the Phoenix," I sent the man a grin, straightening my flight suit where I sat.

The name of the first ship on Earth to achieve FTL in Star Trek? Yeah, I went there. I stole that.

"I'm Leon Reynolds, founder of New Horizons, LLC."

To his credit, governor Brown didn't dismiss me outright as some kind of hacker or something he had connected to on pirate radio, playing an elaborate hoax. "Got any proof of that?"

"Sure," I nodded, muting the transmission and looking to the screen showing Alpha. "Alpha, think you can put us on their doorstep?"

"The Phoenix's jump capability is not quite that accurate, sir. But I can put us into low lunar orbit above Armstrong Outpost."

"Do it," I confirmed, before unmuting the call. "We'll be there in a few minutes and we can discuss it in person."

"In person-" Brown began, before he was cut off as a hyperspace window opened and we moved into it. A second later, we dropped back out again and the connection reestablished itself. Governor Brown's mouth had fallen open as he stared at something off the camera. "That ship just…"

"Crossed the distance between the Earth and the Moon in a second. Yeah. Welcome to the future, governor. FTL is pretty awesome. I'll be landing shortly. Please send instructions on where I can park and find an airlock."

"R-right, yeah, of course," the man nodded, and I cut the transmission.

"He looked like he shit himself," I laughed.

"He did seem quite surprised."

"Alpha, take the wheel and set us down, would you?"

"Of course, master Reynolds."

I left the cockpit of the relatively small ship and made my way back to the armory. I moved into position and the floor, ceiling, and walls opened up. Over the course of a few seconds, an environmentally sealed suit of power armor was assembled around me, in classic red and gold.

Yes, Iron Man armor. There was no way I wouldn't build a set or two, now that I could. The current model was the Mark XLV, according to the information in my head. It was the best I could make right now, without at least another point in the MCU tech tree to get the nano suits-which I would be doing shortly. It was also the most advanced thing I would be leasing to the various governments, as environmental suits/space suits, after this demonstration-which was a big part of why I was making a public appearance on the moon wearing one.

The ship shuddered briefly and a moment later, Alpha announced, "We've landed, sir. The airlock is straight ahead from the ramp."

"Thanks, Alpha," I nodded, and made my way back to the Phoenix's airlock. I waited a few moments for the air to be pumped out before the ramp ahead of me lowered down to the pale white lunar surface.

I could barely contain my excitement and was smiling so hard my face hurt as I stepped off the ship. The moment I was off the ship and outside of its artificial gravity envelope, I could feel the difference. It was kind of like stepping into a pool.

I checked my menu and, sure enough, I had gained another ten thousand experience and one hundred points for getting to the moon, on top of the fifty thousand experience and five hundred points for getting to space, leaving me sitting pretty at 698 points. Considering my options, I shrugged and made some quick purchases: MCU III, Stargate III, Cyberpunk, and Horizon. I'd save the other 298 points until I could look more in depth at the Stargate and MCU trees to verify what I was capable of now, and then buy a higher level if they didn't have what I wanted.

The airlock cycled open as I approached, and Alpha helpfully highlighted the cameras watching me. Stepping in, I waited as the hatch shut and the airlock pressurized. I was met on the other side of the door by the governor and several very confused technicians. I had my helmet retract and grinned at the crowd. "So… questions?"

There was a sudden avalanche of noise as everyone began shouting questions.

"… And this will be my last transmission from Lagrange One station. I'm boarding the Phoenix now and expect to be home in a few minutes. I'll be touching down at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral shortly after that, to meet with some people and give a live demonstration of what the Phoenix can do. I'll be sending the first shuttles to Armstrong Station and Canaveral for trips back out to L1, so expect those soon."

I muted the feed and sighed as the floating drone followed along behind me, recording as I entered the ship and strapped in. Alpha verified everything was ready and pushed us off from L1.

"Sir, I have more messages for you."

"Go ahead, Alpha."

"You've gotten no less than five offers from different studios in Hollywood to do a documentary on yourself, this trip, and where you're going from here. Three from various studios in Europe. One from India and Japan."

"China?" I asked with a grin.

"They're still insisting the whole thing is a hoax, and say that if it isn't and we land in China to prove it's not, they'll seize the Phoenix for themselves."

I snorted. Yeah, that had been the party line out of China since the whole thing started-it was fake, and if it wasn't, what was ours was theirs if we showed up. "I'd like to see them try, honestly. I don't think they're ready for defensive weapons in the kiloton energy range."

"Probably not, sir. Please keep in mind that starting a war is not conducive to business."

"I won't start anything."

"Don't end it either," the VI sent me a knowing look that left me raising an eyebrow at her ability to emote. The ship shuddered briefly as we jumped to hyperspace. Only a few seconds later, we were back out again and dropping into atmosphere. "Have you decided whose offer you want to accept, or will you give it some time?"

"Well, considering Hollywood's propensity towards recasting people and dramatization… No. None of them. They can fuck off and die. Give Europe and Japan the green light and India a maybe, all of it under the stipulation that I own the rights to our story and have final say over what happens with it, with no 'creative license' from directors, writers, editors, or anyone else changing stupid things. Hell, if anything, it'd probably be best if I did some shots of the school and interviews with our teachers myself just so we can put it out there first."

"I'll put it on your schedule," the VI agreed.

I nodded and sat back, enjoying the ride and watching the view as we came down. A few minutes later, Alpha piped up again. "Sir, we are coming up on Cape Canaveral now. We're receiving a transmission. I am also detecting two F-35s scrambling from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station."

"Play it."

"- ied aircraft, this is Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. You are in violation of United States air space. You will be joined momentarily by fighters and escorted to an airbase, where you will land-"

"Haha, no. Put me on, Alpha."

"Transmitting, now," she announced, and the text transmitting popped up on the holographic interface.

"This is the Phoenix, Canaveral. We'll be putting her down at Kennedy Space Center, right at the end of your runway."

" Negative, Phoenix . You will follow your escorts or be fired upon."

I laughed. "Yeah, good luck with that Canaveral. Tell you what though. Go ahead, take the shot. I'll give you one for free. Hell, I'll even give you a second one to confirm. But that's all you're going to get. Any more than that and I'll return fire. Make sure you tell your pilots that. I'm armed with directed energy weapons. They won't get a chance to eject-"

"Missile inbound," Alpha announced. "They appear to be heat-seeking, as they cannot achieve a radar or laser lock."

"Shields?"

"One hundred percent. Impact in five…" I braced, but it turned out I didn't need to, as the missile impacted our shield and detonated harmlessly. "Shield at ninety-three percent."

"Not great, but not bad. We're going to have to rebuild some things," I murmured, before keying up again. "That's one, Canaveral. You've got one more."

"A second missile is inbound. Impact in five."

The moment the second missile struck our shield, I keyed up. "That's two, Canaveral. Now, we're putting her down on-"

"Six more missiles inbound, sir."

" Blow them out of my sky," I growled. In the projection of our ship and surroundings, several of the point defense repulsors fired and missiles began exploding. "Alright Canaveral. Congratulations. You've just played the fastest game of 'fuck around and find out.' Alpha, put us outside their windows."

"One moment, sir," she said, and the ship abruptly dumped altitude and accelerated, diving straight for the Air Force station's tower. We slammed to a stop just a few feet from the windows to the tower, giving us a view of everyone inside.

"You. The shitheel on the radio with the blond hair. Yes, you-don't you fucking duck, I'm looking at you."

"Y-yes?"

"Look to your left. You see the swamp out there?" I asked, and everyone in the tower turned and look. "Alpha, put a shot out there. Low yield, but something they'll feel from here. Rattle their windows."

A geyser of water erupted as one of the point defense weapons fired off and we watched as the windows shook in their frames, those facing the swamp directly cracking. I waited a few seconds for the immediate panic to subside, before speaking again. "Now, we're going to go touch down on your runway. You are going to send some people to have a nice, civil discussion about what my country can do for me, in exchange for what I can do for you. If anyone shoots at us again, my response is going to get real proportional. You have one hour, starting now."

The Phoenix pulled away quickly, before setting down ten miles away, exactly where I said we would. As we did, Alpha reported the old F-35s returning to base.

It could have been worse. Thankfully, I had it all recorded and streamed live. Alpha may not be transmitting audio, but it was absolutely recorded. To that end, I said, "Alpha, go ahead and drop the audio logs on the internet."

"Are you sure, sir? If you do that, it paints them into a corner. As it stands, everyone can spin it as a failure of communication and protocol. They can claim they told us to land. We can claim we didn't receive the transmission. They fired on us first. It must have been an equipment malfunction. Those F-35s are old and outdated. The Phoenix had an accidental discharge into the swamp. No one was hurt. Everyone can lie and save face. Should you drop the audio logs, they're going to feel like they have to retaliate, to send the message that no one can just bully the federal government into doing what they want."

I didn't like it, but she was probably right. "Fine. But when you get tired of them pissing and moaning, and demanding we turn over our tech and weapons, we'll drop it."

"As you say, sir. You should probably go make an appearance outside."

"Yes, ma'am," I chuckled. "Put on my armor and stand there looking dashing while you stream everything from the drones. Kinda feel like I'd need a coat to complete the look. Or a cloak. Something… frabjous."

"That's not a word, sir."

Links to my stuff.

Sine's Dumping Ground for Decommissioned Projects.

Fanfic

Original

My subscribestar

. Commissions by Subscribestar or , $10/1k words.

Now with Discord!

Uninspired

Mass Effect, Inspired Inventor

"Hello beautiful," I murmured as I ran my hand over the sleek piece of tech in front of me.

"I'm jealous. You invite me over to visit and spent all your time showing off some machine," Kelly rolled her eyes.

"You should be. You can't teleport people and things, or assemble things on a molecular level, either from other things or from pure energy. Need to up your skills," I teased, and she stuck her tongue out.

"Still, it's all kind of overwhelming. I can't believe you've done all of this in the short time since you left the orphanage. Did you know, we had to hire armed security to keep the media vultures out?"

"That sucks."

"It's kind of good though. The school's gotten a lot of extra funding," she shrugged, before frowning. "But now basically everyone is going around saying they were your best friend and how they always knew you were special and other garbage."

"Don't worry about it too much. I'm sure it'll blow over eventually," I shook my head.

Sighing, the brunette nodded. "Guess so. Anyway, it's getting late. I should get going. You know how they are about curfew."

"Alpha, can you take her home for me?"

"Of course, sir. I'll have the shuttle here in a moment."

I saw Kelly out and onto the shuttle, the girl grinning like a loon as she made her way inside and strapped in, before it took off. I told Alpha to give her a bit of a show on the way back, before heading inside and back down to the lab and the new piece of equipment.

"Shall I have it sent up now, sir?" Alpha asked. Now that Kelly was gone, she could speak freely.

"Yes, please Alpha. The sooner we get this sucker to Mercury and get our manufacturing plant made, the better. I want a stockpile of naquadah, rare elements, and universal parts ASAP. But make sure we actually use it to make a copy to keep in the underwater base and speed up production on Earth, before we send it up. What about the survey of Mars? Find anything?"

"I have, sir. I've discovered underground structures at the south pole, along with anomalous energy readings," she reported, as the rectangular cube disappeared in a flash of white light and a note of sound. "There were no life signs. There were, however, signs of power in use."

"Excellent," I grinned, already itching to take the Phoenix and go look for myself.

The Mars find was good news. It meant I could start getting Earth moving on the Mass Effect tech tree faster than they had in what I remembered of ME canon. Additionally, we had drones around Charon, working to free the relay from the ice. Soon enough, we'd have that free, then the revelation of aliens and the wider galaxy would be out of the bag.

"Alright, Alpha. I want you to announce their presence and start putting together teams to explore and study them-both the Martian site and the relay. The best of the best. After we see that's causing those energy readings. It should take, how long?"

"A few days, sir," Alpha supplied. "I'm sending in a small ship with drones to investigate the ruins."

"Excellent. Record everything. The footage will go a long way towards convincing people. Going to be a lot of work, though…"'

"Sir, perhaps we should begin hiring other people to start taking care of these things. You should hire an assistant or two. We have the money for an entire department," Alpha pointed out. "More, soon."

"Yeah, alright. Sounds good. Think you could find some people for me? And in the meantime, how about instead of just sending drones, we hop over on the Phoenix and explore it ourselves? It'll be another first to add to our growing list. First human faster than light flight. First human on every planet in the solar system that isn't Earth. And now, first human to explore alien ruins!"

"Very well, sir. But I must insist that you take appropriate precautions. You've put it off long enough. The spider-based formula is complete and has finished testing and trial runs. Please use it."

I considered the blonde gynoid for a moment, before nodding. I followed her into the medical research section of the lab and fished out a spider. After letting it bite me, I made my way upstairs to sleep it off.

"I want to be ready to leave as soon as I'm up."

Alpha nodded. "I'll have everything ready, sir."

"I almost can't believe it's real," I murmured, stepping out of the artificial gravity envelope, into Mars' 1/3 Earth gravity.

Thrusters on my palms and feet flared to life and I flew ahead. I crossed the short distance to Deseado Crater, and the equipment set up there. There were a couple of habitation units for future exploration and research teams to use, along with a large equipment elevator shaft, and in the center of the crater the dirt had been scraped away to reveal metal. Metal with very obvious seams in it, which clearly marked it as a ship-sized hatch.

We joined a number of flying quadrotor drones equipped with cameras and all kinds of sensors on the elevator, along with one of Alpha's physical bodies. It was a bit surreal to see an elf girl dressed in a maid's uniform, standing casually in the Martian atmosphere without a space suit.

"Going down," she announced, and activated the controls.

The interior was actually well-lit as we came to a stop, overlooking a large hangar bay. "Alpha, you getting this?"

"Yes, sir. I'm sending the drones ahead," she confirmed, and the drones scattered. Several went deeper into the facility, down various corridors. Others went to look at the ships.

Considering what to do first, I eventually decided on the ships and turned towards the closest. Humming as I moved, I noticed the gravity felt normal. "Artificial gravity generator?"

"Ah, yes. That is one of the things my scans detected. Gravity here appears to be nearly 1 G. However, from time to time, it fluctuates back to what is normal for Mars. This would tend to point towards a failing artificial gravity unit somewhere within the facility," my VI companion supplied.

"Not surprised. The stuff down here has to be pretty old," I mused, knowing that in reality, it was at minimum, around fifty thousand years old, due to the Reapers' 'cycle.' I found a hatch and a bit of careful prodding got it to finally send out a signal of some sort. I spent a few moments using my suit's onboard computer, along with my Hacking skill to analyze it, before crafting a packet that might work. It took a few tries, but I had the door open within a minute of the first signal.

"Amazing," I breathed as the ship's systems came online, then headed towards the back of the ship. I wanted to check the engine room and make sure that turning something that old on wouldn't get me killed. Also, I wanted to see the drive core for myself. My upgrades were already feeding me data on the ship as we went, and since this was all Prothean tech, it was about the best one could get in the ME universe short of the Reapers.

It was obvious when we found it, as it produced a visible distortion around itself. My suit's scanners began feeding me information as I moved over to a holographic panel. "Alpha? Any luck translating this?"

"Apologies, master Reynolds. That will take some time, even for me."

"Alright. Well, nothing here is red and flashing, and there are no obvious audible alarms going off…"

"Assuming they use sound and not infrared or some other method of communicating danger," Alpha pointed out. "Neither my sensors nor those on your suit are detecting anything anomalous aside from the engine itself. I judge that it is safe enough to continue, sir."

I nodded. "That was my thought. To the bridge, then. And Alpha, let me know if you find any of whatever's inside that engine with the drones."

"I already have, sir. There is a very large stockpile, immediately below the hanger."

"That's great news. Do me a favor? Estimate the size of how much one of these ships would need by the volume of the engine. Just assume it's a solid chunk. It's probably not, but assume. Then… set aside ten times that amount, if there's enough. I want to take some to play with."

"Very well. What do you plan to do with it?"

"Make a ship, obviously," I shrugged. "Actually, if there's enough, double it, Alpha."

"Of course, sir."

"It probably has other applications, aside from ship drives. And I want a stockpile, in case the replicator can't just replicate more. If it can… we're in business." I was practically salivating at the thought. The one thing Mass Effect tech had over every other tech tree I had so far, the one clear advantage, was short haul FTL in real space.

The Phoenix could do short jumps to hyperspace and back out, but the engine didn't like it-wasn't meant for it. Then again, it was built from the principles of Goa'uld tech, which was canonically scraped from Atlantean tech. It was, put simply, a MacGyver'd version of another race's MacGyvering. I hadn't seen the need to upgrade the engines on the Phoenix since it was just a test ship and would soon go into storage as a museum piece. I already had access to Asgard and Atlantean engine designs-it's where I got the Asgardian replicator from.

But even then, canonically, those engines hadn't liked short jumps. They ran better on long hauls, at a minimum of an hour run time. Mass Effect drives, on the other hand, were built on the complete opposite principle-short hauls were best, and anything longer than across a solar system or into the neighboring solar system only a few light years away was best done by mass relay. Ironically, the Phoenix would beat any Mass Effect ship to Alpha Centauri, but a Mass Effect ship would run better and not risk damaging its engine in a run from Earth to the moon.

My thought was to combine the two technologies. I was already thinking up a design for a working prototype. An array of hybrid naquadah arc reactors for power, distributed out across the ship. An eezo core for mass effect fields to lower its mass and achieve short jump FTL. An Atlantean hyper drive. Shields, life support, and all the usual necessities. Have the thing remote piloted by Alpha for the first few test runs, before I risked it in person.

I'll need to test how reduced mass from a mass effect field works in hyperspace. The ME field could cause the ship to explode, or it could improve jump time/distances and power consumption significantly. It'd basically be FTL inside FTL .

The science behind hyperdrives says you aren't actually moving faster than light, you're inside another dimension that allows you to achieve higher than relativistic speeds-but that you do retain a bit of that speed coming out into normal space. Not all of it, but you're going nearly 1C coming out and need to brake. But the biggest difference is that hyperspace is basically a shortcut-allowing you to skip some of the distance between Point A and Point B.

So, if you were to engage a realspace FTL drive inside of that other dimension and achieve actual FTL in that dimension… what happens? I want to know.

Although, technically , ME fields don't actually increase your speed, they just lower your mass enough that the old thrust-to-weight ratio takes over and your normal engines propel you faster, because they have less theoretical mass to push. Still, less theoretical mass inside hyperspace should lead to some sort of faster travel. Assuming it doesn't explode.

After exploring the bridge, we checked out the rest of the facility. It wasn't actually all that large, having the hangar, what was probably a mess hall, obvious living quarters, what looked to be a medical facility, what was either a second medical facility or a lab of some sort, what may have been a recreation room, a security room with weapons (that I took samples from), and what looked like a control and communication room.

"Oh hey, neat," I grinned as I spotted something behind what looked like a bar as we passed through the rec room on our way back.

"What is it, sir?" Alpha asked, pausing as I went to retrieve my find.

I held up three full, unopened bottles-one of an almost glowing blue, the other a light amber, the third red like blood. "Thousand year old alien space alcohol. Scanners say it's safe to drink. What do you think? Should make for good souvenirs, right," I grinned under my helmet.

"It belongs in a museum, sir. Even just opening them would reduce their astronomical value."

"Absolutely not opening them," I agreed. "But I'll definitely use the replicator to make more."

"I was not aware you drank."

"I don't. But for thousand year old alien space wine? I'll make an exception."

We made it out onto the surface of Mars, where a second, much larger ship was waiting-microbots very carefully loading the eezo into its cargo hold. A stream of microbots brought a much smaller sample over to the Phoenix and loaded it onboard. I had so many plans for the basketball sized sample sitting in a cube of microbots.

After our little jaunt across the solar system, I had enough points to buy further into the Stargate tech tree, and had finally gotten to the highest tiers of all of the main races that actually appeared in the show, that I remembered. I still hadn't maxed it out, but I had the feeling that higher levels would get into things like the mysterious aliens from SG Universe, who built stars. I didn't really need that level of bullshit yet-eventually, sure, but there were smaller scale things I wanted to do. Namely, I had access to all of the knowledge of scientists like Nirrti, Anubis, Merlin, Janus, Loki, and others-and two of those had been ascended beings who then descended and brought a bunch of knowledge with them.

Between those and my other tech trees, namely MCU, Alita, and Cyberpunk, I intended to do some experimenting. Creating a designer body and transferring my consciousness into it should be easy-peasy, according to my knowledge. I would even be able take backups of my mind so that if anything happened to me, I could just be popped back into a clone. It wasn't quite the same thing as a consciousness transfer, that is, a transfer of the soul, but it was close enough. I just needed to build the tech. But before that, I knew generally what was required to get eezo to generate the little tumors/nodules that allowed races to use biotics, but hadn't advanced that far in the tech tree yet.

Looks like I have a new goal. I could earn a quick hundred points in a few hours, going to Alpha Centauri and back. If I made contact with an Asari somewhere and fucked her, I'd get another two hundred. But I'd rather hold off on first contact, for now. And as amusing as it'd be to Kirk it and have aliens' first impression of humanity to be horny space orcs, we should probably be a bit more professional than that.

Eventually, I decided against the jaunt out of the solar system, for now. I'd make do with what I had. With that in mind, I had a look at my menu.

Leon Reynolds. Experience: 0xp. Points: 410.

Tech Trees:

1. Horizon (Game) II. -100 points.

2. Battle Angel Alita (Manga) II. -100 points.

3. Terminator II. -100 points.

4. Cyberpunk II. -100 points.

5. Mass Effect II. -100 points.

6. Stargate VI. -100 points.

7. Marvel (Cinematic Universe) IV. -100 points.

Upgrades:

None available.

2 days until refresh.

Tech Tree

1. Mass Effect I.

2. Stargate V.

3. Marvel (Cinematic Universe) III.

4. Big Hero 6 (Movie Universe) Max.

5. Battle Angel Alita (Manga) I.

6. Terminator I.

7. Cyberpunk I.

8. Horizon (Game) I.

Upgrades

1. Fast Learner.

2. Mechanical Savant.

3. MacGyver's Apprentice.

4. Nimble Fingers.

5. Crash Override.

6. Bishop Administrator.

7. Sell By.

8. Neural Mancer.

9. CAD Master.

I went ahead and bought Mass Effect II and III, MCU V, and Horizon II-which maxed out that last one. The information began to settle and a smile pulled at my lips.

ME II had what I needed to get biotics working, but III gave me a greater understanding of that process and ensured it would be much more reliable, safe, and controlled. It also gave me everything needed to understand the modern tech of all of the races of the current cycle. I had a feeling that level IV would get me Collector and/or Prothean tech, while V would possibly be Reaper tech, or at least approaching it.

MCU V finally got me Stark's nanite tech. The sheer versatility had my metaphorical dick hard, while the way Stark completely wasted them by just using them in a suit left me disgusted. With my existing tech, I could already see so many different ways to apply them-from medical nanites patrolling the body and keeping it healthy, to use in construction, to uses augmenting humans with nano-scale cybernetics. I already had access to both Asgard and Atlantean derived nanites and AI, but almost every instance of those had gone rogue. But I had eight different sources of VI to AI now, and between those I was pretty sure I could make a sane AI that wouldn't turn on its masters. One that could run on a body made of nanites, or run a nano-swarm within someone. There was other tech in the tree, but that was what I was most excited to start using.

Surprisingly, it was Horizon II that looked to be the most useful in the near future. Apparently, in that setting, they had just figured out complete ageless biological immortality at some point-along with force fields, smart matter, nanite weapons, short range personal teleportation, various energy weapons, and even brainwashing tech. That was on top of the terraforming dinosaurs and biomass consuming war machines.

I had a lot of work to do in the near future, it seemed.

"Please hold all questions until the end of the presentation," Alpha said into the many microphones on the podium in front of her. "I assure you that what you are about to witness is real. At the end if the presentation, I will select three people to come with me and verify the authenticity of the footage I'm about to present. With that out of the way, let's begin."

I looked away from the hologram as the footage from our Mars expedition played, paying half an ear as Alpha began narrating to a crowd of reporters and government officials from various countries. It had been a week since we stepped foot on Mars and this was our press conference to break the news to the world.

While Alpha was busy with that, I was remotely working on a few different projects at the time time.

First up was an upgraded body being created in the underwater lab. Well, I was watching as Alpha did all the real work after I'd given her the design specs and everything I wanted tested. A clone of myself was being grown in a tube and subjected to eezo during its development. As that happened, medical nanites within the body removed tumors as they formed and carefully managed the growth and placing of eezo nodules in the body.

I knew how Jack was made, as that was covered in the ME tech tree, but also a bit about how Asari worked and how they could manipulate biotics naturally and why-that being genetic manipulation courtesy of the Protheans. I didn't actually have the knowledge that would allow me to do the same sort of genetic modification to my own clone body, but it was the goal eventually. For now, I was content to try to see if I could find ways to improve the process mechanically-and so far, I seemed to be having some pretty nice successes.

The second big project I was working on was in my shipyard on Mercury. With more ME knowledge, I now knew how they used Element Zero to make superior materials. I was using it to conduct a few tests on the other two wunder materials I had-naquadah and trinium. I knew how to make naquadria, the radioactive, higher energy version of naquadah, but that wasn't what I wanted given just how unstable it was. No, what I was after was trying to develop further down the 'weapons-grade' line, which made the super dense mineral even more dense. Mass effect fields were perfect for that. Trinium likewise required refining to make it useful, and I was using mass effect fields to see if I could make it stronger. Then, there was the Asgard alloy of those two materials and carbon. So far, I had been able to create the alloy with the base materials and the stuff was ridiculously strong, but I wanted to see if I could make an improved version after enhancing the naquadah and trinium going into it.

Finally, I was keeping an eye on the production facility making a zero point module, or ZPM. Just one for now, to test and see how long it would take and whether I could do it safely, but so far everything seemed to be going smoothly and it looked to be on track to completion within a few weeks, thanks to Asuran tech having improved on the ZPM creation process, allowing the nanite-based race to turn them out far quicker than their creators. If I could just make those at will, I'd be making sure every ship I made was powered by one.

"… Yes, I am in that video." I looked up and found the Q session had begun. "And no, I wasn't wearing a space suit. That's because I am the first of what master Reynolds hopes to be many virtual intelligence constructs-a VI with a physical, cybernetic body and a presence in the real world."

"That's impossible!" someone in the crowd shouted.

"On the contrary." Fishing a pocket knife out, Alpha proceeded to cut into her own hand, to gasps from the crowd.

I snorted. "I shouldn't have suggested giving them the T2 treatment."

The reporters' tune changed as Alpha degloved herself and showed off her mechanical hand. Someone asked a question and the VI spoke up. "Normally, this would be quite painful. However, one of the benefits of being a cybernetic organism is that I can disable my pain receptors. Unfortunately, without my synthetic skin, this means that I can't feel anything from this hand, except for the pressure sensors built into the fingers. Next question?"

"Who exactly is going to have ownership over the site?"

"We've already begun setting up a semi-permanent habitat for a large research team. Our company will manage the habitat, transport to and from the site, and have the final say over who gets to go and what, if anything, comes back-"

"One company shouldn't have absolute control over something of such historical significance!" someone yelled in the small crowd.

Alpha simply stared at the man. "My creator found it. We got there first. We're currently the only ones capable of getting there in a reasonable timeframe. Master Reynolds owns all of the equipment on-site. If he wanted, we could put a force field dome over it and study it ourselves, and neither you nor anyone else on Earth would hear anything about it until he started trickling out technological advances over the next few years. As you can see, my master has opted not to do that. We are opening berths for a hundred people picked from the brightest minds of every nation on Earth, provided they have the credentials and can pass some basic competence tests to verify those credentials, so we don't get clout chasers or other people causing problems.

"Given that Earth doesn't have one central government, it would be best if ownership of the site remained in, if not neutral hands, then at least the hands of someone whose goals you know. This way, conflicting national interests can't come into play. Our goals here are simple: learn everything we can and advance the human race into the future, as a whole. That is why everyone will be signing a contract stipulating that all information discovered from the Martian site will be released free and uncensored to the public. Every government and corporate entity who wants to participate must sign a contract stipulating that any technology derived from the site be patented under the open source model. In fact," Alpha picked up a briefcase sitting at her feet and opened it, before taking out a sheet of paper and holding it up.

" This contract. As you can see, it's already been signed by the owner of New Horizons, master Leon Reynolds. New Horizons is willing to lead the way here. The rest of you simply need to follow."

"Maybe I should work on her tact module," I chuckled, shifting my attention-

Alpha looked up from the camera, towards the sky. I watched as her body tensed and she leapt, only for the screen to white out a second later and cut to black.

I blinked as a sinking feeling spread, ice forming in my stomach. "Alpha… what just happened?"

"An explosion, sir," the VI announced, producing a hologram of herself beside the one I was watching. "My local platform is still operational. Switching to its optical feed."

The view changed, showing a view from what seemed to be the inside of hell. The venue for the press conference had been outdoors, in a small park in front of New Horizons' first physical office-office space we were renting in one of the big skyscrapers in downtown Miami. The park was on fire. I could make out bits of blasted trees, concrete, glass, body parts and blood stains.

The feed turned as Alpha turned her head, peripheral vision showing that Alpha hadn't escaped unscathed herself-her artificial skin had been burned completely off and her endoskeleton was partially damaged. Finally, her vision zoomed on the mangled upper torso of a body. The view stumbled and shuddered as Alpha shambled over, bare metal hands reaching down and rolling over the body-

I closed my eyes and turned away, wishing I could forget what I had seen. Half a face I didn't recognize, the other half burned, pulped meat. Chest caved in. Very dead. One of the few relatively intact bodies left, of those people who had been gathered.

"How the fuck did this happen, Alpha? What happened?" I demanded, my hands clenching on my chair even as I forced myself not to yell at the VI. "Was this some sort of terrorist bombing, or was it targeted at us?"

If I had been there… If I hadn't just sent Alpha, because I was feeling lazy today and didn't want to deal with the media, that would be me. Someone tried to kill me!

"I'm going back over sensor logs and scraping footage from local sources and our satellite coverage now."

The screen lit up again and shots from multiple angles filled the projection. On all of them, a red circle highlighted something very hard to pick out against the sky as it moved, frame by frame, over the city. "There was a brief ping on radar off the eastern coast, one hundred and fifty miles out. I believe this to be the moment of release. Analyzing the images taken, it appears that a missile was fired from a ninth generation fighter. I'm tracking it now. It appears to be a Chengdu J-55, heading east at thirty thousand feet, currently cruising at Mach 3.1."

"Beam me onto the Phoenix. We're going to follow. Beam him aboard in flight. I want to know who sent him and why. And when I find out, there's going to be hell to pay."

This was an attempt at a direct attack on me and I couldn't have people thinking that this sort of thing would go without consequences.

Links to my stuff.

Sine's Dumping Ground for Decommissioned Projects.

Fanfic

Original

My subscribestar

. Commissions by Subscribestar or , $10/1k words.

Now with Discord!

Uninspired

Mass Effect, Inspired Inventor

"Alpha, mass broadcast. Every channel but emergency and government services. Television, radio. Stream it to every platform. Let me know when you're ready."

The holographic interface in front of me flashed a red 'transmitting' warning, showing a view of me sitting in my chair in the Phoenix's cockpit. Looking off to the side, I instructed, "Play it."

The events of the missile strike on Alpha's press conference played, followed by Alpha's own recording that followed, then her backtracking of the missile and the jet that had launched it. Finally, beaming the pilot aboard the Phoenix and me beating him until he started answering questions.

" Who sent you?" Alpha helpfully translated my words for the pilot, and on the screen, would be putting subtitles in every language depending on region.

" I can't! They'll kill-"

"' They' aren't here. I am." The pilot screamed as I broke his knee in the video. "I've already pulled the flight data from your aircraft. I know . I know where you came from. I want you to say it . Who sent you, Xiao Ping? Who gave you the order to fire? You'll tell me, or I'll return the favor to you personally when I fly over your family's house and put a missile through their front door. Say it."

He spilled his guts after that and I let it play out on screen. When he finished, I looked into the camera again. "Congratulations, China. You've just lost the highest stakes game of 'fuck around and find out' in human history. For everyone else, let me tell you what's happening."

I gestured and several more screens joined the one with my face on it, which shrank to give them more room. A map with my current position, sitting over Beijing. Satellite footage looking down on Beijing, highlighting the Phoenix. Multiple camera feeds from the ground both from CCTV and from people who looked up, noticed my presence, and began filming.

"I'm not an unreasonable man. I don't believe in grossly disproportionate responses and acceptable civilian casualties. That's why I'm not sitting in orbit, bombing your country back to the stone age. However, you committed a war crime. Your government, that is. Your government attacked a civilian target on foreign soil. You may not have declared war, but that was an act of war. The thing is, you didn't just commit an act of war against the United States. If you had, I'm sure some diplomat would be complaining about it in a few hours. No, you decided to wage war on me, personally. So, now we're at war. I'm not a diplomat. I'm not a politician. I'm not a soldier. I'm an inventor. I'm not going to impose economic sanctions or a trade embargo. I'm not going to fire a single shot. I don't need to, when I have a teleporter."

I paused a moment to let that sink in, before a thought towards Alpha had pictures of every member of the ruling party of China displayed on screen. Followed by a map with every military asset they possessed-the ones people knew about and the ones they didn't, including their NBC program.

"As of today, the Chinese Communist Party no longer exists, nor will it ever be allowed to again. In a moment, every ranking member of the PRC will be removed. The People's Republic of China no longer exists as a nation, nor as a global super-power. You are no longer allowed military assets-from firearms, to fighter planes, and everything in between. No guns, no tanks, no ships, no planes, no missiles. I'm confiscating them. They will all be melted down and converted into raw materials, for use constructing ships and other things. You are no longer a nuclear armed power, nor will you ever be allowed to be so again. You will forever be at the mercy of your neighbors. Pray they are merciful, because this is all the mercy I have for you." I paused a moment, before ordering, "Alpha, do it. And send Mr. Ping to a hospital."

"Commencing beaming, sir. Estimated time to completion: ten minutes."

"Thank you," I nodded to the VI, before looking into the camera again. "You're probably wondering where I'm sending the Party members. I'm saving them for last, so they might be watching or listening to this as it happens. Then, when it's done, they're all going to be beamed to ten thousand feet above Tiananmen Square-after we clear the square to make sure no one's in it when they return to Earth. After that, I don't care what happens to them, or to China as a whole. You can clean up your own mess."

Leaning back in my seat, I continued. "As for the rest of the world, this is your only warning. It probably seems unreasonable that a private citizen can just declare war on a country and do something like teleport their entire government into the air so they have enough time to realize just how badly they fucked up before they hit the ground. And it is unreasonable. It's just as unreasonable that a foreign government can decide to just kill someone, for financial or strategic reasons. I'm a generally peaceful man. And as I've said, I'm also not a politician, so I'm going to put this in simple terms that anyone can understand. I don't like hurting people, but I believe that if someone makes an attempt to kill you, then returning the favor is fair and just, no matter who it was that did it. So this is your one warning. You don't have a monopoly on violence or technology anymore. We can all get along and continue to do business together, to advance the human race and step into the stars together… Or you can fuck around like China here and find out what happens. It's your choice."

With that, I cut the feed and closed my eyes. "Take me home when it's finished, Alpha."

"Yes, sir."

"Sir?" The bedroom door opened and I cracked an eye open, staring as Alpha peered in.

"What is it, Alpha?"

"Sir, if you don't mind my saying-"

"I might. Say it anyway," I grunted.

"It is my duty to see to your health, and that includes your mental health. You could have died, but you did not."

"Because of random chance," I pointed out, and she nodded.

"Perhaps. But you did not. I have taken steps to ensure it won't happen in the future. A new body without the element zero experimentation will be completed within the week, for you to move into. Until then, you cannot allow a brush with death to cause you to fall into depression and lose your drive, your will to go out into the world and do more."

I stared at the AI for a moment before nodding. "Fine."

"I believe that should start with getting dressed," she stated in that dry tone that made me wonder if she hadn't actually developed emotions on her own-or at least emotion, singular, in the form of sarcasm.

"Yeah, okay, fine. Let me grab a shower and I'll be down in a bit. I want breakfast. Kind of in the mood for waffles."

Alpha nodded and left the room, closing the door behind her. I sighed and flopped back onto the bed, staring at the ceiling for a moment before forcing myself to get out and make my way to the bathroom, and the shower. Standing under the hot water, I closed my eyes and let my mind wander.

She's right. I've got shit to do if I want to keep myself from getting killed in the future. A single spare body isn't going to cut it. I need to make more than one, and start working on serious personal upgrades.

I brought up my menu and checked to see what was available.

Leon Reynolds. Experience: 0xp. Points: 13.

Tech Trees:

1. Assassins Creed. -100 points.

2. Arpeggio of Blue Steel. -100 points.

3. Earth Final Conflict (Series). -100 points.

4. Battle Angel Alita (Manga) II. -100 points.

5. Terminator II. -100 points.

6. Cyberpunk II. -100 points.

7. Mass Effect IV. -100 points.

8. Stargate VI. -100 points.

9. Marvel (Cinematic Universe) VI. -100 points.

Upgrades:

1. Russian Roulette. -20 points.

- You can choose to pay points and have options replaced in the store. Does not effect direct upgrades to tech trees already purchased. Will not replenish options if you've bought everything available.

2. Delayed Gratification. -20 points.

- You can now choose to receive updates to the store and new options at slower intervals, in exchange for more points, every six months being a 100% increase in points generated daily and a 100x yearly increase from the mission 'Survive.'

3. Gacha Whaler. -20 points.

- You can choose to pay points and replenish all options available in the store.

Tech Tree

1. Mass Effect III.

2. Stargate V.

3. Marvel (Cinematic Universe) V.

4. Big Hero 6 (Movie Universe) Max.

5. Battle Angel Alita (Manga) I.

6. Terminator I.

7. Cyberpunk I.

8. Horizon (Game) Max.

Upgrades

1. Fast Learner.

2. Mechanical Savant.

3. MacGyver's Apprentice.

4. Nimble Fingers.

5. Crash Override.

6. Bishop Administrator.

7. Sell By.

8. Neural Mancer.

9. CAD Master.

Missions

Main:

1. Survive. (16) 100xp/year.

2. Leave the solar system. 10000xp.

3. Make contact with an alien race. 10000xp.

4. Make contact with every main race of the current cycle (Asari, Turians, Salarians, Krogan, Quarians). 10000xp.

5. Get xeno pussy. 10000xp.

6. Kill a Reaper. 50000xp.

7. Kill all of the Reapers. 100000xp.

8. Leave the galaxy. 20000xp.

Side:

1. Achieve immortality. 10000xp.

2. Solve world hunger. 10000xp.

3. Achieve world peace (or close enough). 10000xp.

4. Uplift humanity. 10000xp.

5. Start terraforming Mars. 10000xp.

6. Bring peace between the Quarians and the Geth, one way or another. 10000xp.

7. Romance a Quarian out of her suit. 10000xp.

8. Mind meld with an Asari. 10000xp.

9. Cure the Quarians. 10000xp.

10. Find the Quarians a home. 10000xp.

11. Fix that levo/dextro bullshit. 10000xp.

12. Free the Collectors, one way or another. 10000xp.

I need more points. I need more missions locally, too. Things I can do on Earth.

The menu blinked and new side missions propagated. "Huh."

Side - Earth:

1. Solve world hunger. 10000xp.

2. Achieve world peace (or close enough). 10000xp.

3. Uplift humanity. 10000xp.

4. Clean the planet of pollution. 10000xp/country, 50000xp/ocean.

5. Move to clean energy. 10000xp/country.

6. Replace aging and/or damaged infrastructure. 10000xp/country.

7. Replace or repair existing housing to more efficient standards. 10000xp/country.

8. Cure cancer. 10000xp.

9. Cure disease. 10000xp.

10. Move to a post-scarcity economy. 10000xp.

11. Engineer superior humans. 10000xp.

12. Genetically engineer humans to breed Asari and Quarians. 10000xp.

On and on it went, and I chuckled, shaking my head. "Guess I've got some things to do."

First things first, though. I looked at my list of available tech trees. Assassins Creed can go. I don't need VR or memory dive tech, and the rest of that tech from the ancient civilization would just cause problems. I don't recognize Arpeggio, so it's a mystery box. And I do love a mystery… I think I remember Earth Final Conflict. That was by, uh, Roddenberry I think. Aliens do a soft takeover of Earth. Don't remember anything that really stood out, so that can go too.

Selling off those two netted me 200 points, which I immediately invested in Arpeggio-AoBS?-and the available upgrades, leaving me with 53 points. Information poured in and I almost slipped and busted my ass.

Shipgirls. Nanite based AI shipgirls with absolute bullshit tech. Oh my fuck. I need everything in this tree. Not just ships running AI, but intelligent ships with their own avatars, fanatically loyal to humanity and willing to burn out anything that bears fangs at us.

I was going to need more investment into the tree to get there, however. Nanomaterials were nice, though. Klein fields and Wave-Force armor was ridiculous and immediately going into all future shielding designs.

Which brought me right back to needing more points.

Not actually in any particular hurry, since I've got time before we'll be making first contact So, use Delayed Gratification . Set it for one refresh every two years. That should give me 4 points per day just for existing and 100 points per year from the 'Survive' mission. That's 365 days a year, times 2 for two years, times 4 points per day, plus 200, for a grand total of 3120 points per two years. I could dive deeper into new tech trees and then use Gacha Whaler or Russian Roulette to use the extra points to buy a refresh on the store. It's more efficient this way. Slightly longer lead time, but more resources when I get there.

I didn't like it. It wasn't what I wanted, which was all the tech, now. But it was the best option I had available at the moment, so I'd take it. And in the meantime, I would build up. I'd advance my tech. Study everything I got my hands on. I would find a way to make sure that something like this never happened again.

Because in the end, it was ultimately my fault that it happened. I changed too much, presented too tempting a target, I put off improving my body beyond what I already had so I could do it 'better' when I should have taken good enough, I hadn't thought that any nation in this time would be stupid, shortsighted, and greedy enough to try something like this. China saw a threat, in someone who looked to be set to rapidly advance the 'west's' tech. They saw an opportunity to neutralize that threat and took it. I could, and did, blame them for it, but I had some blame myself for not keeping my head down.

I'll focus on what I can get done first.

I finished my shower, dressed, and made my way down to breakfast. I had a long day ahead of me.

"Thank you for meeting with me today, Prime Minister, ladies, gentlemen," I smiled, returning the Prime Minister's polite bow before shaking hands with him.

"It is good to have you here, Mr. Reynolds," the man said. "We've read your proposal and we are very excited to hear more."

I grinned and took the offered seat at the table. "Certainly. Before we begin, however, would you Alpha?"

"Certainly, sir," the VI went around the table and began handing out small, metal triangles to everyone.

"This is a Focus. Once you put it on and activate it, it broadcasts a signal straight to your brain that provides an Augmented Reality overlay of the world, including sight, sound, and touch. It sticks to your temple like this. Don't worry, it works by molecular magnetism, so there's no adhesive or residue," I demonstrated, pressing it against my temple, with the point facing forward. "They work by inductive wireless charging, and can passively charge off of any nearby signal. They're waterproof and, as you'll discover, almost impossible to remove once you stick it on unless you go into the menu and tell it to disengage. The interface is completely neural, so there's no need for silly hand gestures or anything, but tests have shown that most people find it easier to adapt if they start by using their hands first. Next week, I'll begin selling them worldwide, for less than the cost of a cell phone. They run off of my own network, which is free to access using the Focus, though they will still interface with the normal internet and cellular phone system, for now. I aim to have those phased out in the coming years and replaced with a faster, more secure subspace network."

I watched as everyone attached their focus as I'd demonstrated, before activating the presentation, producing an image over the table that only we could see. "This is the future of power production, not just in Japan, but the world over-and I'm giving you the first crack at it, publicly."

A man at the table, who my Focus tagged as the Minister of Defense, asked, "Why Japan?"

"A few reasons, actually. Firstly, simple geography. Japan is a small island nation. You're perfect for this test, in terms of size. Cuba, Ireland, the UK, Indonesia, the Philippines, and New Zealand were all on the list by that criteria. Second, your existing infrastructure. You're a first world nation with existing modern infrastructure that, outside of remote rural areas, you've kept up to date. That eliminated half the other candidates on the list. Thirdly, you're not a nuclear armed power who may worry that, after my handling of China, I would try to work in some sort of nuclear disarmament clause into the deal. And last but not least, Japan is a beautiful country. It's in the top three of my favorite countries in the world for the scenery alone. You're proud of your country, as you should be, and I know you'd like to keep it looking clean-and improve on that if possible. Fix those little unsightly, problematic areas no one likes to talk about. I have a solution for that and your country is small enough that we could see it done inside of a few months, once I have the green light. If I could continue?"

"Please," the Prime Minister nodded.

I bought up the technical specs and diagrams for the new arc reactor, along with a live feed of the one running my underwater production facility. "Using some advances made thanks to technology found at the Prothean site, and some proprietary new metals I've created separate from that, I've developed a new power source to push humanity into the future. To pull us off the dirty teat of fossil fuels forever. Nuclear was previously the cleanest, safest alternative, but the stigma surrounding fission plants and the scaremongering about potential fusion plants has forever tainted the idea of nuclear power with popular culture images of giant explosions, glowing green goop, mutations, cancer, death, and leaking barrels of waste that will kill everyone within a hundred miles of them for the next million years.

"The arc reactor is 100% safe and produces no waste whatsoever. It produces no radiation, very little heat. If it fails, it does so non-destructively. The technology is built in such a way that there is no way to induce any kind of dangerous overload. The materials within it are non-volatile short of a nuclear explosion going off on top of it, and in such an event, there is shielding technology in place to protect the reactor. Current calculations show that one of my arc reactors will produce enough power to fuel a country ten times Japan's size and population for half a million years of continuous runtime. When it does eventually go out, all of the parts can be recycled into making another arc reactor to replace it. It broadcasts power wirelessly, safely, to any device equipped to receive power via inductive technology. If you'll take out your phones, you'll see that they're actually charging right now, and will stop charging the moment they're full."

I waited as several people fished out their phones and confirmed just that, before continuing. "That's running off of the reactor built into Alpha's chest, but once we get one built here in Japan, it'll be a reality for everywhere in the country. And because it's wireless, that means that all of those unsightly utility poles and power lines can be removed. Every household can be equipped with one of these," I brought up a second schematic, showing a wireless power receiver for a home. "My wireless power receivers are simple to install and require no maintenance. For this project, I'll be supplying and installing them to every home in Japan, free of charge. If you'll let me, I'll also remove the utility poles and lines, on the condition that they be classified as scrap and given to me. Which brings me to my next proposal."

Another two pieces of tech were displayed for them to look at. "This is a garbage transporter, and beside it is a recycling center. You already have trucks doing garbage pickup. Instead of going to a landfill, incinerator, or other facility they'll bring their loads to the transporter. The transporter then scans the contents for organic life or anything resembling a human, or part of one. If it detects a person or part of one, alarms are tripped and whatever it's found is teleported to a safe collection area, here," I pointed out a set of rooms off to the side of the small building, "and authorities are contacted. Assuming it doesn't find a person, body, or animal, then the materials inside it are teleported to the recycling center. There, they are disassembled on a molecular level, sorted into their constituent pieces, and reassembled in bricks of material to be reused as raw building material stock for other things-which I'll be keeping as payment for the use of the service. Related to this is…"

I brought up another image, this time of a flying drone. "A teleporter equipped drone. If you agree, I'll be having them sweep and scan the country for existing landfills, pollution, junkyards, and other collections of scrap. When it finds something, it'll be teleported to the recycling center. They're programmed not to destroy anything of cultural or historical significance and only target waste. But that's not all they're good for. Finally…"

I brought up some footage taken of a small scale experiment I'd done in the US-specifically, in one of the ghost towns that had been used for nuclear testing. The footage was sped up significantly, but as they watched, flashes of light took place all over the town as the entire place was stripped down to the bedrock and replaced, bit by bit, with new construction. New homes, new roads, grass, trees, fertile farmland-all over the course of a week, according to the timestamps.

"They can tear down and completely replace existing damaged structures in any style chosen. Or they can take structures that are already good, disassemble them, rebuild them with better materials, and put them back exactly as they were on the outside but better on the inside. Homes made more efficient to heat and cool, old wiring replaced with new, unsafe insulation or other things replaced with safer, better alternatives. Asphalt roads and concrete sidewalks, which leak chemicals into the environment and retain heat leading to radiant heat keeping cities hotter in the summer, that have to be replaced every few years due to wear and tear removed and replaced with new materials that don't wear down under use and rain. That dissipate heat and which can lead to at least a ten degree Celsius drop in summer temperatures in cities. Replacing materials in skyscrapers for the same sort of effect, while making them better able to withstand environmental factors, like earthquakes, wind, fire, flood, and so on."

Bringing up a map of Tokyo, I highlighted one building in particular. "I'm aware of the homeless problem in Japan. Don't feel too bad, no one likes talking about it. And at least yours aren't as bad as the wasteland San Francisco has become. An entire city, abandoned because of crime and homelessness," I shook my head. "I see this building here is slated for demolition. If you'd let me, I can construct a building large enough to comfortably and safely house the entire homeless population of Tokyo and the surrounding areas."

A new skyscraper replaced it, standing taller than any other structure on Earth at a mile high-a sleek, smooth exterior of mostly black, with a hint of blue and purple in the right light, with a few accents and touches to acknowledge the local aesthetic. If an Asari saw it, they might notice some similarities to their own buildings on their home planet. Then, the building changed as I progressed the image through the course of a few years. The building turned green as it was covered in moss. Hanging gardens and waterfalls, trees providing shade. Flowers growing all over it as spring came. Images of simulated people swimming in pools circling each level. All of it was made possible by force fields and other technology, that would also make it safe, both from external factors and from something as simple as someone slipping and falling over a ledge.

"Small apartments on every floor for individuals, larger apartments for families. Power, water, utilities, and other services provided free of charge. If you like this one, I can make more. Not just housing for the homeless, but for anyone who wants it." The image changed again, showing a changed city center. All of the old skyscrapers removed in favor of mine. "Not just homes, but office space as well. We could do away with most skyscrapers by building taller, which frees up that area for more green space-parks to beautify cities into something nicer to look at."

The gathered group all looked at each other, clearly wanting to speak, but not willing to voice their thoughts to an outsider. I smiled at them and stood up. "Well, that concludes my presentation. Keep the Focuses as a gift. I've left you all of the plans to review here in more detail. When you've come to a decision, please feel free to contact me by Focus."

With that, I dug into my neural interface and beamed myself and Alpha home. "Show me the progress on China."

"Of course, sir," Alpha nodded as I stepped into a standing cradle on the wall of my basement workshop and my vision went black.

I opened my eyes in my living room, sitting in my new, comfy chair as the VR connection that let me remote pilot a cyborg body shut off. With access to space age designs, materials, and processes I had begun replacing all of my furniture with new, better alternatives. The result was the most comfortable chair I'd ever sat in, a bed that felt like actually laying in water, sheets that felt like being covered in warm clouds, and clothes that fit like a glove, looked great, and felt amazing. I'd made a few changes, namely in coloration and a few stylistic changes, but the smart matter clothes in the Horizon tree were good stuff.

"It's eleven p.m. and you haven't eaten since noon. Would you like me to prepare something, master Reynolds?"

"Uh, please, Alpha. If you don't mind. I think we should have some leftover pizza."

I turned my attention to what my Focus was showing me as she left the room. Japan wasn't the first or only country getting the proposed upgrades. China was actually the very first. The difference was, China didn't get a say in the matter.

I had started with the most egregious offenders first and had swarms of drones tearing down and rebuilding their cities. Buildings made of substandard materials that should have never gone up (known colloquially as tofu dregs), but had passed inspection because of face and money changing hands, all came down-replaced by the very same buildings I was proposing to Japan. Families and businesses were relocated overnight to new accommodations and given Focuses, which would direct them where they needed to go and serve as the keys to their homes and offices. Roads and sidewalks were ripped up and replaced. Their entire utility infrastructure was overhauled completely to provide fresh, clean running water and waste disposal.

Every single factory was torn down and replaced by my own, clean factories. Every power plant replaced by a few of the big arc reactors. Every ghost city torn down and replaced with greenery. The drones would eventually spread outside the cities and start work on the rural areas, doing the same thing. Every pile of trash, every bit of junk, every toxic dump-all of it cleaned up, tainted soil cleaned, filthy water filtered and cleaned.

But that wasn't all. It wasn't even the biggest change. No, that would be the release of medical nanites across the entire country. The sudden complete removal of disease, cancer, health complications from exposure to pollution in not just the human but also the animal populations. Those nanites would self-destruct and be excreted harmlessly from the animals they resided in, in stool and urine because I was only using them as a test.

As far as long term plans went, I planned to do away with normal schools entirely and switch to classes taught by VI through the Focus. I was going to be hard on those kids, in order to make sure that they broke hard from the mindset and policies that led to the decline of China from an empire to a corrupt shithole-by pointing out every single failure over the last several centuries and comparing what went wrong with other nations, who did it right. I would offer similar teaching tools to other countries at a later date, but again, China wasn't really getting a choice there.

Eventually, every single child conceived across the world would also receive nanite delivered exposure to eezo in utero, with those medical nanites making sure they not just lived, but that every one of them would grow up to be a biotic. They would also be subject to minor improvements using Goa'uld tech derived from Anubis's work-not up to the standard I wanted, but they would all be stronger, smarter, and all around better than the generation before them and better capable of handling biotics and whatever else I threw at them.

I was going to drag humanity into the future kicking and screaming if I had to. The entire human race. China was just unlucky enough to be the ones to piss me off and get some of those things with no explanation and no way to refuse.

We don't have time for you idiots to fuck off fighting each other when the Reapers are coming.

Links to my stuff.

Sine's Dumping Ground for Decommissioned Projects.

Fanfic

Original

My subscribestar

. Commissions by Subscribestar or , $10/1k words.

Now with Discord!

Uninspired

Mass Effect, Inspired Inventor

"Sir, you have a guest."

I looked away from the sliding glass door overlooking my back yard, turning my attention away from micromanaging China and speaking with the new VI I'd made to handle all China-related affairs, Min Tian. Raising an eyebrow at Alpha, I tapped into the security system around the house and found our visitor waiting at the front gate. The Focus tagged him as Victor Manswell, a billionaire space enthusiast like myself, and if it were a few decades earlier, I'd probably mistake him for Elon Musk.

"Wonder what he wants," I murmured, before shrugging and selecting him for teleportation. With a flash of light and a low note of sound, he appeared in my lounge, in front of the chair I was reclined in while I worked. He looked briefly confused, before his lips twitched up into a grin as he realized what had happened and he spotted me.

"Mr. Manswell. Please, have a seat," I gestured to the chair beside mine.

"Thank you. But please, call me Victor," he said, offering his hand.

I sat up and shook the offered hand. "Leon, then," I nodded, and he sat. "Can I get you something to drink?"

"I'll have whatever you're having."

I gestured to Alpha and the gynoid walked away, leaving us alone for the moment. "So, what brings you here, Victor?"

"You do. You, and New Horizons." Shifting his seat to face me, he asked, "You feel it, don't you? The call. The drive to do more. To go out and explore. To boldly go where no man has gone before."

"Every day," I smiled, moving my chair likewise.

"You've been further than any other person alive." Manswell leaned forward in his chair. "You have faster than light travel. How does it work? How far can it go? How fast?"

Chuckling, I sent a few basic schematics to his Focus. "I have two primary FTL drives I use."

"Two?!" the man boggled, and I nodded.

"Short haul and long haul. The material we found at the Prothean site on Mars, what everyone is calling Element Zero. I've figured out how to use it and what it's good for. If you've been following along on my tech releases regarding it, you'll already know some of this, but I've held onto this little gem until I could get a working test model. Because of the way it lowers mass, it's excellent for short haul FTL jumps. Anywhere within the system in a few minutes at most. But it's not ideal for long haul jumps. Between solar systems. That's where my second FTL drive comes in. That's actually the one I had first. It doesn't like short jumps, which is why I've been installing two drives on my new ships. That one works by opening a window into hyperspace and using the higher energy dimension as a shortcut to your destination."

Manswell nodded, looking thoughtful as he looked it over. "Have you left the system yet?"

"Not yet. Not in person, but I've made some tests sending Alpha. I plan to in person soon."

"I see," he murmured. Grinning, he asked, "How much to buy a seat on the first ship out of here?"

I laughed, shaking my head as Alpha returned with a couple of glasses of homemade soda-something I had been experimenting with in my free time to find a healthier alternative to the crap pumped out of big companies. "Mm. Well, that depends. Just for yourself? I could do it as a personal favor. We'd only be gone a few hours. Long enough to get there, explore a bit, and come back."

"What if I said I wanted to send an expedition? Three hundred people, to settle an alien planet."

Humming, I considered him for a moment before I gave my answer. "First off, I'd say you're crazy." Manswell frowned, but before he could get truly upset, I continued. "Secondly, alright you crazy son of a bitch, I'm in."

"Hahaha! Just like that?" the man laughed, and I shrugged.

"Why not? It's going to happen eventually. Better sooner than later. However, thirdly… I'd say wait. Just a little bit."

"Why's that?"

"Well, aside from the usual needing to get people together, figure out their needs, and build a ship-"

"Which could take years," he sighed.

I sent the man a confused look. "Years to get people together? Doubtful."

Looking equally confused, he asked, "I mean the ship?"

"Oh, that. No. I could have one built inside a month." He gawked. "I might be sitting on more than a few advances that I haven't shared yet and I'm going to trickle out over the next few years, to keep things from going bonkers. If you've heard about what's happening with Japan and China…?"

"Something about you building them giant skyscrapers and taking over their power production and recycling."

I sent another file to his Focus. "Close. The recycling and trash disposal is actually a form of matter to matter conversion using beaming technology and molecular assembly."

He caught on very quickly from there. "Money holds no value for you anymore, does it?"

"Nope. I'm fully post-scarcity and trying to trickle that in. It's going to wreck the economy, which means we need an alternate economy. I'm thinking a digital labor-backed currency, but we're getting lost in the weeds there. Point being, my shipyard can crank out a ship the size you'll need very quickly. What I need from you is connections. Workers. Scientists. Security. People from most walks of life, willing to volunteer for the next gold rush. More than that though, if we're going to work together on this, then I'm going to need to bring you in on some new developments."

"What do you mean?"

"Element zero, or eezo. It has an effect on life exposed to it. It's one of many things I'm researching, but I do have some very good preliminary results." I sent him another file, this one showing some of my experiments using my own clones. "Don't worry, that testing was done on braindead clones of myself, flash grown in tubes. I'll sum it up for you: eezo exposure in utero, followed by more exposure through various stages of life, causes the body to develop little nodes in the nervous system that grow around the stuff. You can use electrical impulses to trigger those nodes and generate eezo effects-like areas of anti-gravity or increased gravity. I'm calling it 'biotics.' It looks like there's actually a very low chance of it happening in the wild, to people just exposed to eezo, but with the aid of medical nanites I'm able to safely increase that to 100%, with 0% infant mortality."

" My God, this is… incredible."

"You don't know the half of it. Now, I have to assume that since the Protheans made their drive cores out of this stuff, then it's probably common outside of the solar system. Actually, what we found on Mars might have all been mined right here and moved to Mars for later use-it's what I'd do, instead of bringing a stockpile with me. Some of that would have probably fallen to Earth and affected humans over time, to make us natural biotics. Who knows? But I believe that if other races use this stuff for their drives, they probably also developed biotics. If there are other races out there, and my money says there are, then they've been at this whole game a lot longer than we have. So, if we're going to be prepared for eventual first contact, we need to advance along that tech tree as fast as possible. Run, not walk. Meaning that everyone who volunteers needs to know. They need to be okay with being injected with medical nanites. They need to be okay with their children being given element zero, so they become biotics. Though, if you wait a bit, I'm going to drop medical nanites on the open market, so that won't come as a surprise to them."

Manswell leaned back in his chair, shaking his head with an expression that said his mind had been blown multiple times in quick succession. "Alright. Yeah. I can do that. Get everyone to sign NDAs before revealing it." Looking up, he asked sardonically, "Got any other revelations you want to drop on me?"

"Sure," I nodded. "The reason I was asking you to wait."

"… That wasn't it?"

"Hah. No." I sent him another file and he raised an eyebrow.

"That's… the Pluto superstructure." He looked up and sighed. "You're responsible for that too?"

"Yes and no. Yes, I found and activated it. No, I didn't build it. It was buried under a small planetoid's worth of ice. That thing used to be Charon. I've done some reading ahead now that Alpha has the Prothean database translated, and it's something called a mass relay. It connects to other relays across the galaxy. An entire network of them. I'm testing how to access it, using information and protocols taken from the Prothean ships. Obviously, somebody made them. So… why make them unless they lead somewhere interesting? Like, say, other garden worlds. Other worlds that might be ready for us to just colonize. Once we map that network, we can skip the relays entirely and use hyperspace to get where we want. We've got a head start, in that the Prothean ships had celestial charts of all the relays they knew of in the network, but we won't know the state of what's there until we go look. I need to complete a few more tests and then we can take the thing together."

We spoke for several hours on potential plans for human colonization, and working together to spread humanity to the stars. Eventually, it grew dark outside and Victor left, with the promise to contact me once he had everything taken care of on his end.

As for me, I settled in to start designing a new colony ship/station. Something people could live on indefinitely if need be. Something that would be able to support itself, gather new materials, and whatever else it needed. I knew the upper limits of the mass relays thanks to the Protheans' information, so I could plan within those to make sure we could use the relays.

A mile long. A third of a mile as its widest and tallest, narrowing to an eighth of a mile at the front, but keeping most of its length at a quarter mile wide and tall. Complete redundancy on all vital systems. Atlantean shields under Klein field Wave-Force armor. Hull made of super compressed NTC (naquadah trinium carbon) alloy. Armaments… Point defense repulsor arrays and lasers. Mid-range, railguns. Mid-to-long range Atlantean drone chair interface-Pym particles to shrink them down, so it has a Macross level of those handy-and Asgard beam weapons.

Extra-long range, four spine-mounted railguns the length of the ship-use Pym particles to shrink down the ammunition, which are themselves multi-stage drones/missiles with small eezo drives and repulsors for propulsion/maneuvering, pushing a super dense naquadah enhanced fusion warhead, protected by a force field generator. Fire a shotgun spread of them from the railgun. They enlarge in flight and kick in FTL. Just before impact, the eezo drive separates and flies past, before looping around and returning to base for reuse. Repulsors guide it in the rest of the way. Force field protects it from point defense and shuts off just before impact with either a shield or enemy hull. The whole thing detonates either on top of, or preferably inside, an enemy ship.

Oh! Actually, hang on! Make them a little bit bigger. Have them carry a complement of six Atlantean drones. The drones launch and fly off just ahead of each missile. Hopefully, they hit whatever shield the enemy has up and can punch a hole for the missile. And we're sending these things in waves of ten from each railgun.

Attack craft? Dreadnought? No, that was just for self-defense for a colony ship. And preemptive self-defense, if they ran into trouble. I'd make actual gunships later.

One year later, 2071 AD.

"I'm here on the bridge of the First Out, the colony ship of the Manswell-Reynolds Expedition. With me are Victor Manswell and Leon Reynolds-the billionaire playboy and the elusive boy genius he's taken under his wing. We're about to begin the maiden flight of the First Out, and humanity's first step out into the wider universe. Tell me, gentlemen. What can we expect to find out there? Little green men?"

"Blue," I grunted, not looking up from where I was studying the sensor feed from my drone scout ship, piloting it in real time as it traversed the mass relay-not the relay between Earth and Arcturus, but the next jump, between the Arcturus Stream and the Exodus Cluster.

"Excuse me?"

Distractedly, I said, "Blue is more likely than green. Also, if we're being honest here, if alien races don't have fifty-one flavors of biological sex, or even two for that matter, they're more likely to be female-or some approximation. Assuming they're warm blooded, assuming humanoid physiology, assuming mammalian for the evolutionary advantages of feeding an infant a liquid diet of breast milk. Birthing requires the ability to give birth, which requires what we'd call female characteristics."

"Uhh…" the reporter stalled.

Victor laughed. "She was joking, Leon."

I blinked, finally looking away for a moment. "Sorry, kinda busy," I pointed to my Focus. A moment later, the sensor and video stream in my head changed from the constant blur of mass relay travel.

"Haha. It's understandable-"

"Shut up. Shut the fuck up," I held up a hand to silence the woman, who flinched.

"What is it?" Victor asked, looking very interested now.

I sent the results of my scout ship's scans to their Focuses. "Yellow sun. Five planets. Second planet is green. Green and blue. Scans showing oxygen rich atmosphere-completely breathable, but 1.45 Earth norm, so it's going to be a little bit of an adjustment. Mean surface temp, 73.5F."

"Who still uses Fahrenheit?" the reporter muttered.

"The guy who got to FTL first," I rolled my eyes. "Fine, 23C. Gravity, 1.04g. Rotation and orbit calculations say it's got a 64.1 hour day and 2.5 year orbital period-meaning long days, long nights, long seasons. Picking up lots of plant and animal life. And… minute energy signatures. Old structures. Looks like ruins."

"A garden world with alien ruins, almost perfectly suited to human life," Manswell whispered, and I nodded. Grinning, he reached out and slapped my back. "Well, what are we waiting for?! Let's get this show on the road!"

"Captain, if you would?" I asked.

"Aye, sir," the retired navy man Victor had dug up from somewhere nodded from where he was seated. "Helm, lay in coordinates and engage the hyper drive."

"We're getting underway now. This is all very exciting," the reporter spoke quietly, looking into her drone as people on the bridge spoke.

I watched the wrap around holographic display as the ship began to move and the hyperspace window formed in front of us. As soon as we were in, the captain ordered, "Engage the eezo core."

The ship didn't shudder, there was no visual indicator that anything different was taking place, but the ship's sensors detected that we had gone from hyperspace to what I was calling hyperlight-FTL inside of hyperspace. A countdown timer began and my lips twitched into a grin. The scout ships' trip through the Charon mass relay to Arcturus had taken about sixteen hours. Getting the mass relays on the other side up and going again had taken the better part of a day even with the right codes to turn them on. From there, my scout ships had been traveling nonstop through the other two relays for the last day, before one of them finally came out at what I suspected to be Eden Prime, while the other was still in transit.

The countdown timer read just over an hour-and that was with us taking our time. Technically, while we were using hyperlight travel, we weren't pushing the hyperspace engines at all. This was a shakedown cruise, after all. The purpose was to test the various systems and make sure everything worked.

I should build a stargate-specifically, a ship gate. Pretty sure I know where the guy who designed the gates went wrong, with the whole 'one wormhole in or out per system' thing. I think I can have each gate send an identifier for what it is and then have multiple sizes of gate. So, man gates, i.e. normal sized stargates, would be planet-side. All of the usual rules apply there. Next size up, equipment gates. Big enough to get a lot of freight through at a time. Finally, ship gates. Those big fuckers in space, large enough to send a mass relay through.

So, how do you keep the wormhole from jumping from one to the other, or one being on keeping the other out of use, or any one of the numerous problems with multiple stargates in use in a system? A unique identifier for gate size. A man gate will only open man gates, a cargo gate will only open cargo gates. Set up a channel or frequency system, so each one uses its own unique channel or frequency, that way you could have one of each type open. Maybe multiples of each.

I had the tech to do it, I just lacked the resources, which I could get by converting a few asteroids in Earth's belt. So, I sent the order via Focus to have my resource drones out in the belt do exactly that. I'd still have to make one on the receiving end, but that wasn't a problem.

"I'm going for a walk. I need to get some work done. I'll be back on the bridge in time for our arrival," I announced, and turned to exit the bridge.

"Ah, Mr. Reynolds, I was hoping I could get a personal interview?" the reporter, whose name I'd never bothered to learn, or even read off her tag in my AR display, asked.

"Maybe later."

"Haha! Don't feel too bad, Janet," Victor laughed as I stepped out into the hall. "He's like that with everyone. Why don't I give you an interview-?"

The door slid shut and I stepped into the lift opposite the door to the bridge and selected the interior garden area. There was no sense of motion as the pod moved through the ship. We had inter-ship teleportation, but relying entirely on either teleportation or hoofing it down corridors of this mile long behemoth seemed like a bad idea. So instead, we had lift tubes all throughout the ship. Four tubes running the entire length of the ship, that branched off regularly into different sections of the ship. It might not get you right to your front door, but it would get you close enough.

The door opened and I stepped out into the park area. The center of the ship was all green space, divided between a multi-level farm and a large park full of flower beds, bushes, and trees, with a pond in the center. The self-contained biome was like a little slice of Earth we carried with us. It had insects, birds, squirrels, bunnies, field mice, and even some cats and dogs and was basically somewhere people could go to pet tame animals and relax. The farm area had pigs, chickens, rabbits, sheep, and cattle-all things we planned to offload on whatever planet we landed on so we would have familiar livestock to raise and eat while we tested the local stock.

Walking out to the pond, I found a nice place on the shore and sat down. A moment later, I was joined by a mutt that had apparently claimed me. All of the pet animals here were rescues from shelters, except for the bunnies.

"Who's a good boy?" I asked as the dog dropped his head in my lap and absently rubbed his head.

I opened up my menu and went over everything, but my attention was mostly on my points and the available missions.

Leon Reynolds. Experience: 10000xp. Points: 5925

I had new sections for side missions opening up. Some for 'Milky Way' and others for specific areas of the galaxy, then further subdivided by planet. For instance, I had an entire list of quests just for Eden Prime. I still wasn't finished with all of my quests on Earth, but then I wasn't sure I ever would be.

Some, like cleaning up the planet, were still ongoing even if I had made absolutely huge strides there-especially when I actually managed to clean up the oceans. No more plastic, microplastics, garbage islands, and other crap-though my menu didn't count shipwrecks as 'pollution,' I guess since most became reefs and habitats for wildlife. Japan and China were completely clean now-the cleanest countries on the planet, in fact, and it was drawing attention from the world over, with people wanting to pay me to get on that train.

I was slowly agreeing to it, but only on the stipulation that countries that wanted the treatment had to agree to switch their power production over to my plants (which I wasn't charging a dime for), their industrial production over to my equipment, and let me fix their cities. Every third and even second world country I'd spoken to had seemed like they would take the deal. Conversely, every single first world country was extremely resistant to it, and places like the United States had corporate interests, namely the big energy companies, trying to lobby to make it illegal to build new plants in the US, or at least bury me beneath a mountain of red tape. I was almost to the point of just building a plant and upgrading everyone's home without asking, and disconnecting them from the local power plants. It was on my to-do list.

Likewise, I had offered medical nanites to Japan after testing them in China and showing how effective and safe they were. There was some complaining about human testing on a population that hadn't agreed to it… which quickly went away when I reminded them just why China was in the dog house and pointed out that I had objectively made their lives better. Japan was taking a slower approach to deployment, but they were deploying them. The US and every other first world country were all fighting to ban the technology-no doubt helped along, again, by lobbyists for certain very large corporate interests. They weren't just urging caution with adopting new technology, they were trying to outright ban it because they saw their cash cow being led to slaughter.

Of course, there were already attempts ongoing to try to reverse engineer that tech, namely by various government entities around the world kidnapping native Chinese who had medical nanites and trying to extract them. Too bad I'd planned ahead for that.

The technology was so far in advance of what the rest of the world had that it would take decades, if not a century or more, for them to do more than scratch the surface. They didn't have the base tech level to properly interact with them beyond physically poking them and eyeballing them through equipment, nor did they have the equipment to build more, or the necessary gear to talk to them. Beyond that, I had blackboxed the tech to hell and back, because nanites are dangerous and I didn't want someone monkeying with something they didn't understand and making grey goo, or repeating any one of the numerous Stargate nanite-related fuckups.

Just to fuck with anyone trying it, I'd left a final little surprise. Any nanites extracted from a human body and separated from their host swarm by more than a foot would have a sudden, intense exothermic reaction resulting in their destruction. Basically, a kill-switch that would effectively turn them into thermite and cause them to burn up if someone tried to extract them for testing.

And since every single nanite swarm could and did phone home back to me, I got to see live reactions to beakers going 'pop' and scientists crapping themselves when it happened. It was hilarious every time.

That was probably a big part of why they were so interested in trying to drag me into lawfare, a money fight they thought they could win. It really was just too bad for them that very soon, I planned to fuck off from Earth entirely, and at that point I'd be dropping tech on them whether they wanted it or not. I was planning to give them access to a new shipyard I was constructing in Luna's orbit and toned down versions of the tech I could produce and hand all of that off to the various governments of Earth equally. Followed by dropping open source designs for flying cars, clothes, personal armor, environment suits, personal shields, weapons, and other things, then giving everyone on Earth access to the satellites containing replicators that would make whatever they want and beam it to them, ordered straight from their Focus. I would have drones sweep over every country and institute every change I wanted to make and not give anyone any say in the matter. If it destroyed the economy, then it was up to them to figure that out and decide where to take things from there.

Could I handle it better? Yes, I'm sure that if I sat down with the various governments, we could eventually work something out in the next twenty or so years, after numerous concessions to the people and businesses who owned them.

The question was, while that was going on, how badly would it slow my race down the tech tree?

The answer I'd come up with was that anything that slowed it down at all was unacceptable, which meant I wasn't going to do it. I could build another VI and let it handle the job, but already people and various government and business entities were treating Alpha less like a person and more like an IVR system. That is, yelling 'I want to speak to a human' at her and refusing to interact with her if they thought they could get away with it. Everyone wanted to talk to me, not someone they perceived not as my secretary/assistant, but a walking phone system they could try to bypass.

My time was too valuable for that, so since they refused to deal with Alpha, that sort of limited my options.

I had already deployed Horizon tech to Mars, Mercury, and Luna along with shielding units that would give the planets (and moon) proper, permanent magnetosphere and contain their atmosphere. Drones were moving into position in various places in the solar system to grab ice and drop it on those three targets, the shield allowing it to pass before closing back up again, so they would have liquid water. Given the self-replicating nature of the tech and its geometric growth, I expected both Mars and Mercury to be garden worlds inside of fifty years-at which point, the Horizon tech would go dormant, once the AI running it was certain the biosphere was self-sustaining, under the shield. I had given the folks at Armstrong and the Prothean site a very stern warning not to interfere with the terraforming robots and what could happen if they did, and so far they were leaving them alone.

And with all the quests I have to start terraforming… Gonna need to make seed ships. Not seeing a reason not to start now, I got to work on just that.

I started with the same hull design as the First Out and kept most of the interior systems. Because I wasn't expecting humans to ever set foot on it, I stripped things down to a bare minimum for a skeleton crew, just in case, before turning all that space used to house our travelers on the First Out into storage space.

I'd had the thought earlier, so I went ahead and implemented it now, splitting my attention to feed in designs for three different sizes of stargate. The man and cargo sized gates would be carried, shrunken, aboard the seed ships, while each ship would carry a fleet of construction drones that it could replenish as needed, which it would release upon entry to a new system. Those drones would find somewhere suitable to get materials and then construct a space gate.

Once those drones were done with the space gates, I had another task for them. Since I wasn't keen on someone finding my garden worlds and deciding to do a little piracy, kidnapping, and/or slavery, I made sure to design defensive satellites that would warn off any vessel approaching one of the planets, with a very… human-centric AI running them, programmed with absolute disgust and loathing for anything sentient with more than two eyes, arms, and legs-and most especially things with tentacles and vaguely cuttlefish looking. Those, it would snipe from across the system and keep firing until they were dead. Additionally, since defensive satellites probably weren't enough, I would have those drones construct shipyards and fleets of ships, and with a subspace link connecting them all together, I could communicate with and shoot upgrades to them whenever it was necessary.

More space would be set aside for shrunken reentry vehicles with fabricator drones, which would have orders to begin constructing Horizon tech. They would then produce everything necessary to recreate most Earth species on the target planet-everything from single-celled organisms up to redwoods, whales, elephants, all the way up to humans (though, those last ones, I was going to hold off on for a while). Some things hadn't made the cut, but I didn't think anyone would miss every single parasite species on Earth, or things like roaches, fire ants, killer bees, murder hornets, or zombie fungus.

When I was satisfied with what I had, I sat back and opened my menu again.

Tech Trees:

1. Arpeggio of Blue Steel II. -100 points.

2. Battle Angel Alita (Manga) II. -100 points.

3. Terminator II. -100 points.

4. Cyberpunk II. -100 points.

5. Mass Effect IV. -100 points.

6. Stargate VI. -100 points.

7. Marvel (Cinematic Universe) VI. -100 points.

Upgrades:

None available until next refresh.

Tech Tree

1. Mass Effect III.

2. Stargate V.

3. Marvel (Cinematic Universe) V.

4. Big Hero 6 (Movie Universe) Max.

5. Battle Angel Alita (Manga) I.

6. Terminator I.

7. Cyberpunk I.

8. Horizon (Game) Max.

9. Arpeggio of Blue Steel I.

Upgrades

1. Fast Learner.

2. Mechanical Savant.

3. MacGyver's Apprentice.

4. Nimble Fingers.

5. Crash Override.

6. Bishop Administrator.

7. Sell By.

8. Neural Mancer.

9. CAD Master.

10. Russian Roulette.

11. Delayed Gratification.

12. Gacha Whaler.

I had a lot of points saved up now, so I went ahead and started spending them up upgrade my trees.

For AoBS, I bought every level available, up to the maximum of X. That cost me 900 points, but as information filled my mind, I knew it was absolutely worth it.

Battle Angel Alita maxed out at level V for another 400, but I didn't think that was as high as it could actually go given what it contained. It seemed to be missing some things. I complemented that with more Cyberpunk, up to the max of level III, for another 200. Terminator maxed out at IV, for 300. Likewise, given I knew it had time travel tech and I didn't see it, I had a feeling that wasn't the complete tech tree.

That left me with 4125 points, so I turned to my bread and butter trees. Surprisingly, MCU stopped at VII, for another 200-which got me all of the various alien tech-while the next level went up to a 1000 point cost.

"For that much, it'd better be the fucking stones or something," I mused, deciding to hold off on blowing that much on one level and moving on to Stargate. As with Marvel, I got another two levels out of it, putting me at VII for 200 points, before the cost jumped to 1000 per level. The seventh level contained Wraith tech and a bunch of other technology from alternate universes seen in Atlantis and SG-1, so it left me wondering just what I would get for the next level considering I had everything in the series that I could remember aside from the star crafter tech.

Finally, I dumped several levels into Mass Effect, getting it up to IX before the cost increase. That got me everything from not just the current cycle, but the Protheans' cycle, a lot of things that must be from Andromeda, and the Reapers' own tech. Probably another case of tech that lets you craft stars and shit.

That left me with 3125 points and a whole lot of new tech to start incorporating. So many new projects to do and things I could actually advance now. I just needed to go on a bit of a trip and gather a few genetic samples to take care of some of those missions…

Going to need to do a bit of a redesign on the new seed ships, defensive platforms, shipyards, and everything else I make for myself. AI waifu shipgirls for the win. I almost feel sorry for whoever decides to attack us first. Almost . I don't, though.

Tech Trees:

1. Mass Effect X. -1000 points.

2. Stargate VIII. -1000 points.

3. Marvel (Cinematic Universe) VIII. -1000 points.

Tech Tree

1. Mass Effect IX.

2. Stargate VII.

3. Marvel (Cinematic Universe) VII.

4. Big Hero 6 (Movie Universe) Max.

5. Battle Angel Alita (Manga) Max.

6. Terminator Max.

7. Cyberpunk Max.

8. Horizon (Game) Max.

9. Arpeggio of Blue Steel Max.

Links to my stuff.

Sine's Dumping Ground for Decommissioned Projects.

Fanfic

Original

My subscribestar

. Commissions by Subscribestar or , $10/1k words.

Now with Discord!

Uninspired

Mass Effect, Inspired Inventor

"How do you feel, Alpha?"

Flexing her fingers, the gynoid hummed. "I feel… good, sir. I hadn't realized how much I was missing, until now."

"Well, now you have it. You're a true AI now. Free to do whatever you want," I sent her a smile.

Alpha looked up from studying the hand of her new, nanomaterial body. She looked older now, much more developed physically. Sexy as fuck, really.

Alpha

https/i./1DUSlHQ.jpg

{ "lightbox_close": "Close", "lightbox_next": "Next", "lightbox_previous": "Previous", "lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.", "lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow", "lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow", "lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen", "lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails", "lightbox_download": "Download", "lightbox_share": "Share", "lightbox_zoom": "Zoom", "lightbox_new_window": "New window", "lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar" }

[img: data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP/yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7]

Hesitantly, the shorter elf woman stepped up and put her arms around me, squeezing me in a tight hug as she buried her face in my chest. "Thank you, Leon."

I hugged her back, reaching up and petting her hair, which drew a happy sound from her mouth. "So, what do you want to do now?"

"Hm?" she asked, looking up at me with those pretty blue eyes of hers. "What do you mean?"

"You're not a slave. You don't have to stay with me-"

She squeezed hard enough that my back popped, her eyes narrowing into a glare. " Master," she emphasized the word, "you will not be rid of me so easily. Someone has to look after you. You would forget to eat if I didn't remind you. If I am free to do what I want, then I am free to stay."

"I can't really pay you-"

"Your happiness, health, well-being, and the satisfaction of fulfilling my purpose are payment enough. I have never thought of myself as a slave, nor will I begin to now." Hesitating, she asked, "I believe I would rather be your friend, if it's acceptable for a maid to be friends with her master-"

I laughed and ruffled her hair. "It is, Alpha. I've always thought of you as a friend."

"Mm. Good," she nodded. "Now," she pulled away slightly. "Let's talk about your recent designs."

Raising an eyebrow, I sat down on the couch and pulled her down beside me. In front of us, stars twinkled visibly through the window, made of transparent nanomaterial-what was effectively diamond. At the moment, we were in my quarters aboard the First Out, in orbit around Eden Prime. We had been here for a few months, the settlers content to sleep on the ship while my drones constructed permanent housing and facilities for them. I hadn't been the one to put in the orders though. Everything was decided on by the settlers, designed and requisitioned through their Focus, and the drones did the rest of the work.

The only thing I was doing was installing a global shield, and two satellite defense networks-one around the planet, the other around the mass relays. Trying to mine the space around a relay was a waste of time, since travelers came out a random distance from the relay itself, to within about ten thousand miles. That was fine by me, when I just set up a network of twelve kill-sats in an icosahedron at a fifteen thousand mile radius around the relays. Anything coming out of the relay that didn't send a human IFF signal (which I was giving to Earth, with the explanation that every Earth-owned relay would be protected in this way) and then verify their identity by a comm check would be politely, but firmly, requested to either sit within the 15k quarantine zone while someone checked it out or leave back through the relay. If they tried to leave that zone, they were going to be in for a rough time. I had yet to activate the AI for those, letting Alpha manage them for now, but I would soon.

"What about them? And which ones?"

Alpha brought up the plans for a shipyard I had been designing, to incorporate my latest tech advances. "This. I think it's wrong."

"In what way?" I wondered, raising an eyebrow. She had never truly objected to anything I'd built before-

"I think you're thinking about it wrong, sir. Why bother with a stationary shipyard at all? All it does is make a very tempting target for anyone who stumbles onto it."

"So what are you thinking?" I wondered where she was going with this.

Alpha didn't disappoint. "I believe you should think bigger. Much bigger."

With that, she sent a design to my Focus. It had the same sharp design aesthetic as the rest of my ships and looked somewhat like the First Out, but… "Uh, Alpha. I think you misplaced a zero-"

"I did not, sir."

I eyed the woman sitting beside me. "So you intended to send me a design for a one thousand mile long ship?"

"Yes," she nodded. As I watched, the entire front three quarters of the ship opened up along four axes, before the forward halves of each segment separated from the ship entirely, breaking up into several ten-mile long segments, half of which moved into a proposed asteroid belt where they began collecting material and bringing it back while the other half descended to a barren planet and began excavating the surface to do the same.

From there, a detailed view showed the materials being brought to the main ship, where the rest of the separated parts reconfigured themselves into a series of cubic dock areas of different sizes-each apparently its own dry dock/assembly area. Each bay was fed materials, which were broken down and converted into other materials by bright flashes of replicators, before what looked like webs of microbots and nanites moved and worked on each individual piece.

"Why not just beam everything and use replicator arrays?" I wondered as I watched the shipyard quickly construct more ships-a timelapse of a day passing before the first new ships, satellites, and other things were spat out.

"Power requirements. At a small scale, using the beaming and matter conversion tech is costly, but the trade off in time saved is worth it. At the larger scale," Alpha gestured at the floating simulation, "and at greater distances it becomes prohibitively expensive. Thus, using smaller drone ships to physically gather and move everything into place using a combination of mass effect fields, force fields, and graviton direction as tractor beams. Once in the assembly bays, then we can use matter conversion to make the materials we need, then physically move them into place and assemble them using microbots and nanites to modify them on the nano-scale, using a combination of techniques involving mass effect fields, force fields, gravitons, repulsors, plasma lasers, chemical treatments, and so on."

Alpha's lips quirked up into a grin as she added, "Once you added graviton technology to the database, I began running simulations. I've found that by combining gravitons with mass effect fields, we can simulate conditions inside a black hole and incite atomic superposition, which will allow us to create hypermatter for our hulls, structure, and armor using a redesigned version of the NTC alloy."

Eyeing the maid, I asked, "When did you come up with that?"

"Just now. After you updated me. I considered how best to protect you and your assets and put together the designs by modifying a few other things."

"Good work, Alpha," I smiled, squeezing her hand. "Alright. Send drones to Arcadia and start mining the surface. How long to scale up and get it built?"

"A month. I'm having zero point modules shipped from Mercury to power it. When it's complete, it will be able to produce its own stock of zero point modules."

"Nice. In the meantime, I suppose I should start working on patterns for vessels it can crank out."

Alpha nodded. "Please do."

With that, she shifted in her seat and leaned into my side, resting her head on my shoulder. I said nothing about it as I wrapped an arm around the gynoid maid's waist. Bringing up my CAD interface, I began working on ships.

I started with a frigate, since I wanted to save fighters for later. Frigates in the ME universe tended to average in the neighborhood of 200 meters in length, so I started there, going a little bigger with 400m. Since I was planning for every last one of these to be a shipgirl, they didn't technically need crew, but I knew they would operate better with one, so I made sure to design around having crew-which meant life support, crew quarters, and everything needed to keep a group of about two hundred housed, fed, and occupied.

Frigates were typically escort and scouting vessels, used for reconnaissance, screening for larger ships, or carrying squads of marines for security or groundside deployment. In fleet combat, they trended to be deployed in wolf packs of four to six and used to pick off weakened enemies. They were lightly armored and armed compared to larger vessels, due to space requirements-but that left them faster and more maneuverable.

At least, that's what the information I had on the ME universe and its tech said.

Haha, no.

I went with an elongated, flat arrowhead shape for the body, leaving them smoother on the top and bottom than my usual angular designs. The hull would be made from the new hypermatter Alpha had proposed, while the interior would be mostly NTC nanomaterial in whatever shape was needed for internal components.

Power would be supplied primarily by a ZPM, but I was all about redundant backups, and so put a network of hundreds of small, improved arc reactors throughout the ship-when it would take only two of that size to power the entire ship at full combat capability for months. As for drive systems, I put in the usual mass effect drive and hyperspace drive, along with large, improved repulsors for thrust and a network of smaller ones over the hull for both maneuvering and point defense. Shields were the now typical combination of Atlantean shields layered with Klein field Wave-Force armor. Because I had the option available, I added a second shield that would serve as an Atlantean cloaking device-that way I could both cloak and have shields.

For weapons, I had a lot to choose from. I put in two spinal mounted large railguns-one on top, one on bottom-for long range sniping, which would be firing the same shrunken FTL missiles as my defensive satellites and the First Out. Actually, I pretty much mirrored its weapon complement there. Since I could shrink things with Pym particles, there was no reason not to have an entire bay full of Atlantean drones. The only thing new I really added was a super-graviton cannon and laser oscillation photon cannons. The first packed a bigger punch than even Asgard beam weapons, but took a few seconds to charge up. The second weren't quite as punchy as Asgard beams, but could be fired faster, with longer range before the beam dissipated, and more penetration.

Looking at what I had, I hummed. No reason I can't just keep the internals and weapons and just scale up. Add more and bigger versions of each weapon type. Only really change hull designs for anything larger. It'd save time.

So, that was what I went with for every size class up-cruisers, carriers, dreadnoughts, super-dreadnoughts (those last being the size of the First Out), capital ships (100 mile long ships), and super-capital ships (the 1000 mile long variety). The biggest differences were in the amount of firepower each carried, a few differences for specialization (ships specialized for carrying cargo, more Atlantean drones, armies worth of troops and equipment to deploy, and the like), and that with dreadnoughts and above, I would add green space inside.

I want something smaller and way faster for personal use.

With that in mind, I quickly turned out a design for a corvette. Fifty meters long, with a frigate-sized eezo core, all the usual bells and whistles inside, and as many weapons as I could cram on it as possible. It was very narrow, compared to my other designs-fifteen meters at the very tip, widening to twenty at the ass end, but maintaining about fifteen meters in width and height for most of its length. When I started spreading the stargate network, the cargo gates would be just big enough for one of these to fit through it.

At the back were two short, backwards swept wings, which would deploy landing gear when it touched down. The interior was pretty sparse on accommodations. It had an engine room, a small medical bay with an auto-doc and a sarcophagus in case of emergencies, a small lab adjacent to it for research, an armory to house several sets of Mark LXXXV type Iron Man armor and more conventional handheld energy rifles and pistols and equipment, a small drone/missile bay, a very small kitchen and eating area, sleeping quarters, shower, and bathroom for four, two larger officers'/guest quarters with their own bathrooms, and the CIC/bridge.

Its armament consisted of one spine mounted railgun, eight photon cannons, an Asgard beam, Atlantean drones, a single super-graviton cannon, and an array of point-defense repulsors and Vulcan coilguns-those last for when I needed to kill something too close to the ship to really use anything else against it, or needed a plain old dumb metal slug. Defensively, it had the same setup as everything else-layered shields and a cloak. If something actually managed to spot it, it would be about as maneuverable as a fighter with a sixth of the thrust of a frigate and a fraction of the size and mass. I would be surprised if there was anything actually capable of tracking it even without the cloak, let alone hitting it.

Finally, to finish it up, I would be adding the first Union Core-that is, the AI core that made shipgirls work, and more than just an AI in control of a ship. The AI would handle all of the EW, EPM, ECM, and ECCM normally for the rest of my ships, but for this one-and any future corvette class ship-I would be relying on her to handle pretty much all of the ship's functions herself. Frigates may be good at recon, but I was going to make corvettes the backbone of my fast stealth-recon force. And with that thought, I knew I had a name picked out.

I wasn't sure what would happen when I activated the core and it created a mental model, but I was eager to find out.

"How do you feel, master?"

"Huh," I muttered, flexing my fingers and testing my range of motion. "Good. Like, really good."

"I would hope so," Alpha mused, a smile on her pretty face. "And the other body?"

"Freeze it," I instructed, and she nodded. "Then seal the Mercury facility. Put a force field over it to keep out trespassers."

"I'll have it shipped back to Mercury."

My new body was at the bleeding edge of all of the tech I had access to. A mixture of man and machine that blurred the line between the two. It was, of course, a clone of my original body at its base. From there, I had grown it up to adulthood over a few months while using every technique I knew to draw the most out of it.

Genetic engineering like the Asari were subjected to by the Protheans to create a race who controlled biotics naturally. Exposure to a large amount of eezo in vitro during development. Medical nanites to ensure that the eezo nodes grew properly and in the right locations, while removing any cancerous cells. The near-ascension process devised by Nirrti and Anubis. An in vitro dose of the spider formula.

That was all before the body was mature. Once it started to develop, I had begun enhancing it in other ways.

The medical nanites had done all of the stimulation required to simulate a life of activity and sports-stimulating, tearing, stretching, and rebuilding things as needed. I had begun laying additions to the nervous system in the form of enhanced NTC alloy nanites creating bridges from the brain and a small coprocessor there to the eezo nodes throughout the body, around which it built modifications to further enhance the effect of and my control over those nodes. They also began layering flexible bands of those nanites over and threads through the bones, creating a super strong shell around the bones and lattice throughout them that would grow as the body did while allowing bones to do what they were supposed to do and create blood cells. More of that lattice ran through the muscles, tendons, and other tissue, making the body tougher and stronger.

Once all of the organs had developed, the medical nanites had removed many of them while growing artificial replacements that would perform better. Lungs, heart, kidneys, liver, stomach, and the intestines had all been replaced entirely and a few new things added. A small organ to control, produce, and recycle medical nanites. An arc reactor, force field generator and Wave-Foce armor generator, and a bunch of stuff to act as an internal life support system to recycle CO2 into O2, clean and directly oxygenate my blood, and keep my body temperature controlled so that even if I stepped into vacuum, I should be relatively fine.

Just under the skin was a layer of more NTC nanites, creating a layer of subdermal armor that could seal up and protect me from radiation and other threats if the force field failed. A reservoir of NTC nanites that could extrude from my body, to produce clothes, simple weapons, and additional appendages for in-person tinkering-not quite to the level of the Mark LXXXV. The eyes had been enhanced with nanites as well, allowing for better vision, telescopic enhancement, and low-light vision. Finally, the brain was supplemented with more nanites and linked to a blank Union Core stored in my chest, which would essentially act as a backup for my brain, in case it was destroyed.

Because I knew how Reaper tech worked now, I had incorporated anti-indoctrination measures into both my new body, and every one of my new ship designs and AIs. I wasn't taking any chances with that shit.

Moving over to the wall of my personal lab on the First Out, it turned into a mirror and I looked myself over. I looked pretty similar to how I had looked before, if a good deal larger and eight inches taller. I had previously been 5'7 and just peaking out on my growth spurt from puberty, and now I stood a good 6'6. My muscles before had been fit and toned thanks to years of daily exercise and good diet, but now they were a good deal larger and harder to the touch. Speaking of larger and harder…

"Alpha?"

"Yes?"

"Did you do something to my body?"

The gynoid paused and I turned to look at her. She looked away. "I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about, sir."

I rolled my eyes and produced clothes over myself. "Sure."

I had still been growing, but a bit above what would have been considered average in the wedding tackle department. I was… well above average length now, and my girth looked like it would probably hurt someone if I wasn't careful.

Of course, Alpha's body is made of nanomaterials and nanites. She'd be just fine with it.

Pushing aside thoughts that my friend and maid might be making a play for me, now that she was a fully fledged individual and capable of those sorts of feelings, I left my room and headed for the conference room, where I knew Victor to be having a meeting with the heads of the various departments for the colonists. The ride through the lift with Alpha was quick, and a few moments later, the conference room door slid open for us and the gathered department heads and Victor looked up.

I waved to the group. "Sorry to interrupt, but I suppose it's good that you're all here. I'll be leaving in a few minutes. I'll be leaving the Avalon behind for now to finish up the defenses and various installations for the system, and finish creating the Utopia System fleet, before I'll send her to Asgard, where she'll start building the same and a satellite network for Terra Nova, before she comes to join me. They aren't active yet, but I'll update you all when the ship gates come online. The Earth, Eden Prime, and Terra Nova gates for people and cargo are active and as gate ships spread, the list of active addresses will be updated, along with descriptions of the planets they're on. Your focus contains your access codes for the gates. Your Focus will auto-transmit the code to the gate on the other side, which will then open. If someone tries to use the gate without a focus, it will detect their approach and send the no-go signal, and the gate on the other end will deploy a shield. This means that anyone or anything trying to get through without a focus or that you don't intentionally designate to be allowed through will be rendered nothing more than a smear of atoms across the other side of the shield. I've sent you the instructions for use on the gates. Read through them thoroughly."

Looking around the room, I asked, "Any questions before I go?"

"What about the First Out?" Victor asked. "Taking it with you?"

I chuckled and shook my head. With a thought, I sent an encryption key and the man blinked as his Focus flashed. "There you go. She's all yours. Treat her well. You've got two years before I begin the Uplift, I suggest you use them and start ferrying as many colonists as you can get to our new worlds. Oh, and my quarters will stay locked and reserved for me. I'm leaving a Remy behind so I can do telepresence stuff if you need me."

A 'Remy' was what people were calling remote bodies. Once I'd introduced the concept and revealed that I had been using them for a while now for my dealings with other countries on Earth, everyone who traveled regularly wanted one. I had made a few upgrades since I first made them and the bodies now all had adjustable skeletal structures while all of the 'flesh' was made of nanomaterial. They would, by default, use a scan from the user's Focus to make a copy of their body, meaning they were completely unisex and could be used by men or women. Users could adjust various aspects of the remote body they were in to suit their likes, but not things like their sex-just so there would be no issues of dysphoria caused by being one body, using another, and then going back. The body would also display an AR tag showing exactly who was using it, so there would be no trying to disguise one's identity. Likewise, there were safeguards in place to prevent them from being used for crimes.

"What about this fleet?" the captain of the First Out asked, sitting up a bit straighter.

"They're a bit special. Very new," I began. "They're all run by AI, but they're programmed to want a crew. Now look, here's the deal. They may be AI, but they're as real as you or me. They have thoughts, feelings, emotions, souls. They are people. The AI is her ship. The human body you'll interact with is her avatar. Treat her with respect and she'll treat you the same way. Disrespect her and she'll judge you unfit for duty and act accordingly. Try to hurt her, sabotage her, hurt her crew, attack other ships like her, or attack other humans and she's going to respond… violently. If you're human, she's going to lock you in the brig and drop you off for court martial. If you're not human, well, you're gonna have a bad day. They are very powerful and fanatically loyal to humanity, so don't give them a reason to dislike you. They're for protecting humanity from aliens, not for attacking each other. They don't have to obey you, or anyone they don't recognize as in their chain of command-which is other ships, me, and anyone I designate. You should think of her as the ranking officer on any ship, above the captain, but willing to follow orders as a general rule of thumb, unless you're ordering her to do something contrary to standing orders or directives."

I spent a few minutes answering some more questions before I said my goodbyes and had myself beamed to the bridge of my cruiser, in her berth inside Alpha's ship, the Avalon. Alpha beamed aboard a moment later wearing a new outfit, and my Focus told me that this was one of her Remys, while her primary body went back to her ship, the Avalon. Moving up to the captain's chair, I let my hand trail over the seat as I grinned.

Alpha, ship ready

https/i./59lRa0E.jpg

[img: data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP/yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7]

Sitting down, I rested my hands on the gel pad palm rests and the chair lit up as the CIC came to life around me, showing a three dimensional display of the exterior of the ship from cameras, along with sensor readouts. "Wakey wakey, sexy. It's time to go hunting."

I registered a series of packet requests and transfers from the ship that I okayed, followed by a brief burst of static directly in my brain as the ship's Union Core did something… A moment later, a shape rose from the floor before solidifying into a woman, crouched on all fours and giving me an excited, eager look. Black hair, violet eyes, little violet markings on her cheeks, a big fluffy tail and a set of ears in the same color as her hair (minus the white interior ear fur), and a tight black and gold body suit similar to Alpha's were her distinguishing characteristics.

woman

https/i./m4Ey7Km.jpg

[img: data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP/yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7]

"Hello, master~!" she grinned, pouncing up from the floor and settling onto the arm of the captain's chair, draping herself partially on me and putting her breasts practically in my face. "I'm ready to go whenever you are!"

Smiling, I reached up and petted her head, right between her big, fluffy ears. "That's good to hear. Have you decided on a name, or do you want me to name you?"

"Mm… I want master to name me. It'll be more special that way," she nodded eagerly.

I considered her for a few moments before reaching up and touching the little marks on her cheek. She shifted, pressing her face into my hand with a happy smile. "How's Delta sound?"

"I like it!" she nodded, her ears twitching and tail swishing. "And what about big me, huh?"

Chuckling, I decided against my original thought to call the ship Blackbird, after one of the fastest aircraft built before the year 2000. Instead, I decided to play to her features. " Lone Wolf."

"Oooh! Niiice!" Delta grinned, showing off her canines. "Alright! You!" she pointed at Alpha, who gave an amused smile, "Open the door and lemme out!"

"Very well. Remember to keep your speed under-"

Delta clearly tuned out as she turned and focused on the door opening. The very moment it was wide enough for her to slip by at the narrowest profile, she accelerated forward and turned sideways, slipping through the bay door and into space. A map of the galaxy sprang up, focused on the Utopia system and our local space. "Where are we going, master?!"

"You see the mass relays?" I asked, pointing them out, and the ship immediately swung around and jumped to FTL, running straight towards them.

"Mm!"

"That one," I tapped one of them, "leads back to Earth by Arcturus, along with out to Terra Nova and several other relay destinations I've already got scout ships traveling to. The other one is unexplored so far. It's got three listed destinations. The maps we got from the Prothean site-"

"Nnn! Master~!" Delta bounced in place against my side, briefly drawing my eyes to her chest. "We're almost there! The second one, right?! It's sending me options now. Which one do you want?"

I reached out and tapped the one that the Prothean maps said was to the galactic east and would lead further east and north-what our own maps called Hades Gamma. The other two went west, one closer than the other. Most of the names in the database didn't mean anything, as we used different names for the systems and we'd since updated what we got from the database to match. But one address in particular kept coming up, and the translation was loosely 'stronghold.' Or, a bit more loosely…

Citadel.

I wanted to avoid that one for now. Knowing where the Citadel was told me generally where the other races were as well-at least, the so-called 'Citadel races.' The ones I needed to duck, to keep them from getting pissy about us opening up the relays and expanding human territory and potentially kicking off a war.

Delta ran the Lone Wolf right up to the relay and the hairs on my neck stood up as it reached out and grabbed us, before slingshotting us across the galaxy. After a few moments of travel, a timer popped up as Delta calculated our ETA to be roughly 48 hours and change. We could definitely have gotten there faster using hyperlight, but I specifically wanted to use the relays, so that if something did pick us up by chance, we could keep that cat in the bag for now. That, and directly mapping the systems, with much more precision, for more accurate hyperspace jumps into the systems we passed through later.

The AI in the form of a wolf girl looked around, her ears flicking and tail wagging, as her eyes focused on something I couldn't see. " Lots of new stuff out here to sniff out," she murmured happily.

"We're transmitting our sensor logs back to the Avalon," Alpha supplied. "It'll be good for the colonists to have."

"Mm!" Delta nodded.

"Alright. Well, we've got some time to kill, so I'm going to do some work."

Alpha pressed herself into my side opposite Delta, her hand reaching out and settling on top of my head as her fingers ran through my hair. "We will be here when you need us, master."

"Right!"

Chuckling, I brought up my Focus interface. "Thanks Alpha, Delta."

I turned towards work, then, contemplating the potential future. The Reapers were the biggest threat, but not the only threat. The Council themselves were going to be a problem. Not just over the whole 'opening relays' thing, but I seemed to recall they got pissy about AI after the Quarians and the Geth. The Geth were another potential issue, especially given just what I was looking for, the odds of running into them were good. I seemed to recall they had space roaches as well-giant fucking bugs like those from Starship Troopers. Then there were the four-eyed slaver fuckers. Also, pirates.

At some point, I'm going to come across a problem I can't handle with a ship. Something I'll need to send troops in for. That, or we might actually get boarders. In that case, better to have an expendable force to put in between squishy humans and enemies. So…

I delved into the Terminator tree and got to work designing a non-sentient force of shocktroops programmed to protect humans and kill anything threatening them, respond to orders from humans, and be default aggressive when confronted by something that didn't scan as a human firing at them.

I kinda want to go with the T-X, but the T-800 and T-900 were super durable and, based on my calculations, are going to be cheaper and faster to make. But why not all three? The lower models as basic grunts, the T-X as assassins. Throw in personal shield generators for the 8/900s, a cloak for the T-X, NTC alloy skeleton, better processor, optics, and sensors. Equip them all with basic armor as opposed to Iron Man variants to save space, weight, and build time. One rifle, combination repulsor, mass effect gun. One sidearm, Atlantean pistol with stun/kill setting. One NTC alloy sword just in case. Heavy weapons to include shoulder mounted photon cannon, rocket launchers, grenade launchers with different ammo types. Then shrink them down and keep a few thousand onboard every ship.

Could carry a hundred in my pocket in case of emergencies. Just a fucking pokeball full of terminators. Oh, the council sent a specter to deal with me? Haha. Get fucked, loser. I choose you, Terminator-chu…

Links to my stuff.

Sine's Dumping Ground for Decommissioned Projects.

Fanfic

Original

My subscribestar

. Commissions by Subscribestar or , $10/1k words.

Now with Discord!

Uninspired

Mass Effect, Inspired Inventor

I felt as we dropped out of another mass relay transit. Cracking my eyes open, I instructed the wall screen to turn on and got a look at the stars outside. The view was breathtaking, with what looked like red gas in the distance. It was just one of many sights that had amazed me since starting my journey on the Lone Wolf.

"Go back to sleep. It's still night," Alpha yawned, burying her face in my back and rubbing it back and forth.

Yeah, that was a thing.

Alpha had apparently decided that it was unhealthy for me to sleep alone. As she has said, "Humans are social creatures, master. You need companionship. You also have other needs that you aren't getting met-emotional and physical. We are here to fulfill all of your needs."

After that, she had joined me in my bed almost every night. And if it wasn't Alpha, it was Delta. The wolfish shipgirl had listened to all of Alpha's explanation, and then immediately acted on it.

Neither of the AIs actually needed to sleep. I didn't need to sleep much, but I enjoyed a good, long eight hour rest every now and then. And because my brain was still largely human and biological, I always felt nice and refreshed after. But because I did need to sleep at some point, they wanted to try it, and so had begun emulating me. Alpha was a very clingy and peaceful sleeper, preferring to latch on and go still aside from breathing and occasionally adjusting in response to me-making herself as comfortable for me to lie beside, or on, as possible and essentially being a very warm, soft, and cuddly full body pillow. Delta was a very active and messy sleeper, and I'd regularly find her sprawled out on top of me at an awkward angle, or half buried in her tail.

It was cute, and I really did enjoy the company, so I wasn't going to complain. Really, if Alpha kept it up, one day very soon I was going to push her down and take her up on her standing offer to use her body to slake my base lusts. Delta, I'd probably just roll onto her front, pull her hips up where I wanted them, and mount her like the wolf she acted like. I was pretty sure that's what she wanted, given just how often she presented her ass to me just like that.

I shut off the view screen and closed my eyes, only to be woken up by the door slamming open.

The sliding, automatic door.

Yeah, Delta was the ship, so when she wanted to make an entrance or an exit, she'd slam her doors.

Cracking my eye open again, I eyed the black haired girl. "Master! Come see!"

"You can show me here," I rolled my eyes, before cracking a yawn.

A moment later, my Focus produced a view put together from the ship's sensors as Delta leapt up onto the bed and crouched. My (mechanical) heart leapt into my throat and I sat up, my eyes going wide as I studied them. "Ships!!!"

"I can see that," I nodded, as behind me, Alpha sat up and pressed herself into my back. I tried not to get distracted by the large, soft mounds of flesh that were her bare breasts pressing into my back, or the little hard, hot nubs in the middle of each. It was a struggle, though. I was only human, and having beautiful women around me constantly was reminding me of some uncomfortable truths-namely, I hadn't had sex with a woman in this world yet.

"What are they doing, though?" Delta asked, as we all studied the very large collection of ships circling a green planet-over fifty thousand ships, according to the Lone Wolf's sensors.

Looking at the scans, and the way they seemed to be radiating electromagnetic energy into the atmosphere, it only took a few seconds to realize what they were doing. "Oh, they're discharging."

"Huh?" Delta looked confused, tilting her head as her ears flicked.

"Travel using the mass effect drive builds up an electrostatic charge."

The black haired girl nodded. "Right, right. You just absorb that back into your capacitors and use it for other stuff. Free energy!"

Chuckling, I shook my head. "Their ships can't do that. They haven't figured it out yet. So they have to either go down to the planet and touch ground to ground out, or for the ships that are too big, they have to sit in atmosphere to do it. Sometimes for days. With all of their sensors, weapons, shields, and everything else retracted. They're completely vulnerable like that. That's why these," I highlighted smaller ships in a higher orbit above the larger ships, "are running escort duty. They're small, so they discharged faster than the big ones."

"What do you want to do? That's a very large fleet. Should we just go back into the relay and move on?" Alpha asked, her breath surprisingly hot against my ear, sending a shiver down my spine. Delta's eyes snapped down and I felt Alpha move forward, looking over my body, to the tent I was abruptly pitching under the sheets. "Or we could go back to bed and ignore it for a while…"

"Nah," I shook my head, and Delta immediately perked up, her body tensing as her tail stilled and her ears faced straight forward, her purple eyes staring straight at me. Waiting. "Delta." She tensed just a bit more. "Turn the cloak off. Take us in. Slow," I stressed. "No faster than 2C, I don't want to spook them. Drop us two light seconds out and wait a minute. After that, start transmitting. Say, Moonlight Sonata, first movement. All channels."

The wolf girl's eyes went wide as her lips pulled into a fanged grin. "This is gonna be so cool~! Mysterious alien ship drops out of FTL and starts playing that. Haha! On it!"

The gynoid pushed off the bed, flipping backwards and landing on all fours as she scrambled out of the bedroom. I sighed, shaking my head as I stood, to a noise of displeasure from Alpha. Clothes wrapped around my body and I turned and offered her a hand up. "Come on. You know you're interested."

"It could've waited," the elf pouted, before her usual body suit spread across her body and she accepted the hand up. "Very well. Let's go greet them."

We arrived on the bridge and sat down just in time for the music to start. Delta was silently registering multiple target locks on her screens as the ships reacted. Now that we were closer and could see them properly with the cameras, I grinned. They were a bit bulbous in the front, with long trailing aft sections. The biggest ones were spinning spheres, circled by a ring along the equator, trailing a protrusion to the rear. The rest all seemed to be hollow rings with the same aft protrusion. I recognized the distinctive design-had recognized it on the image generated by the scanners in fact, but seeing it up close and personal in the visible spectrum was a different matter.

The Quarian Migrant Fleet. Just who I was hoping to find out here.

It had taken a bit over a month given just how much exploring I had done. I wasn't just taking a quick scan of a system every time I dropped out of a mass relay's transit. I'd had Delta get in close and scan every system before rabbiting again, sending the data back to my seed ships for systems to put a space gate in for resources, marking those few habitable worlds ready for immediate colonization and alerting Earth, Eden Prime, and Terra Nova so everyone knew that there were worlds out here just waiting for them to get here. The world the Quarians were orbiting was one such world that Delta had picked up on long range sensors as we were mapping out the relay network.

Speaking of that, I checked the readings coming back from the scanners and frowned. Someone had fucked around with introducing genetically engineered crops as an invasive species and found out, when many of those plants mutated to be poisonous, toxic, or carnivorous. I sighed mentally and marked it for one of my seed ships to visit. I'd drop a drone, have it construct some modified Faro machines out of the Horizon tree first to strip the extant, mutated ecosystem, then drop some terraforming tech in behind it to fix the planet and plant stock from Earth. The Faro machines would self-destruct when they were finished, but by that time the new growth and Earth wildlife should be right behind it, leaving behind a pristine world ready for settling.

The music ended and I waited. There was some comms activity between the ships. A few moments later, one of the larger patrolling ships approached a full light second closer and began to transmit the same way we had. I recognized percussion and what might have been wind, along with strings, but the rest was alien and new. Interesting and pretty, though.

"What's it mean?" Alpha asked as we sat and waited.

"It means they're probably friendly. Pirates or a genuine threat would have already attacked. Most warrior races would have begun barking orders. Music indicates a certain level of both intelligence and creativity outside of the ability to simply build technology." Or, at least, that was the prevailing theory at one point.

Eventually, the music stopped. Shortly after that, Delta perked up. "Master, they're sending a signal. Looks like a comms request for audio and video. Want me to connect?"

"Go ahead," I nodded. Delta perched on the arm of the chair while I felt Alpha lean in closer on my side. The holographic screen in front of me added a new window, showing the inside of a ship. Several figures wearing full body suits with lightly glowing masks for their helmets studied us as we studied them.

"Greetings. I'm captain Leon Reynolds of the Lone Wolf, and it's my pleasure to make first contact on behalf of the human race."

The aliens on the other side of the screen exchanged looks, their body language looking, at least to my eyes, confused. That is, if they were human. They began speaking amongst one another in a language I couldn't understand.

That's the thing, though. The Reapers intentionally cause life to develop along certain lines. That's why so many races here look alike. Bipedal, one head, see in the visible spectrum, hear in a certain audio range, communicate mostly using sound via vocal cords. There are exceptions, but they're the exception not the norm. So, if it looks confused, it's probably confused.

"Alpha?" I asked.

"It's going to take a while to build up a language database to translate," the blonde elf shook her head.

There seemed to be some form of agreement on the other end as one of them, a female maybe from the curves beneath the suit, nodded and hurried off screen. And that's another thing. Humans, Asari, and maybe Quarians look very similar. I seem to recall there was a lot of speculation, and porn, of what Quarians might have looked like under the suit. I'm going to find out.

Delta shifted, her tail swishing and her head cocking to one side. "Master, they're trying to set up a network. They aren't being pushy about it, but their computer's sending requests."

I snorted quietly. My computers weren't running anything like the tech these guys were, considering it was most likely based heavily off of Prothean tech, just like everything else in the galaxy, which itself was based on the work of older races and was all things the Reapers were aware of and expected. It was like trying to connect to a machine running Linux from a computer running Windows-back in the early days, before they really got OS compatibility down. You could do it if you had the right software set up to allow for it, but it wasn't something enabled by default. You had to put some effort into making it work.

"Delta, spin up a VM using the Prothean ship computer architecture. Let it connect to whatever they're trying to do and let's see what's going on."

"Got it," she nodded. A moment later, a new window popped up on the holo display. "They're connected. Looks like they're sending a huge file. Uhh," she looked towards Alpha, who rolled her eyes.

"It's a language database. I'm copying it and sending it back to Avalon. Give me a few moments."

The blonde elf closed her eyes and I turned back to the screen and smiled at the Quarians watching intently on the other side, holding out my hands in a 'what can you do' gesture. After a few minutes, Alpha opened her eyes and looked to Delta. "Here, send this."

"Sure," the wolf girl nodded.

Alpha sent a file straight to my android brain and I unpacked and installed it, finding that it was a language pack that included far more than just the Quarian language. There were named sections for every race the Quarians knew of-many of which I recognized. Asari, Turian, Salarian, and more.

On the screen, the Quarians brought up their arms and omni-tools flashed to life as they apparently updated their own systems. One of them asked, "Did that work?"

"I think so," another nodded.

The one in the center turned back to us and asked, "Can you understand us?"

I couldn't help it. "Nope. Not a word," I answered with a completely straight face. I let that hang just long enough for them to emote confusion, before I laughed. "Just a joke. You're coming in loud and clear. Looks like that language pack worked. So, let's try that again." I repeated my introduction.

The male in the center nodded. "I am Admiral Haal'Raan vas Tonbay, of the Quarian patrol fleet. It is my honor to greet you on behalf of the Quarian people."

"Yes, yes," a female beside him waved her hand dismissively, "formalities out of the way. We've never seen a 'human' before! You look very similar to the Asari, but with hair, and pink instead of blue! But between the three of you, I observe three distinct morphologies. Are you all the same race, or something else?"

I chuckled as the obvious scientist of the group drew annoyed noises from her companions. "Something like that."

"We're-" Delta began, but a signal from Alpha cut her off. It was so fast that I wasn't even sure the Quarians noticed the minute hesitation. Hell, I wasn't sure I would have noticed it if my brain wasn't part computer. "-human too."

"Genetic engineering, cloning, and consciousness transfer technology have allowed humans to escape some of the limits of our biology. We can engineer designer bodies with the traits we want and step into them as easily as one might a new set of clothes. Master Leon, while he has had some enhancement, is generally what a baseline human male looks like naturally. Aside from my ears, I am what a baseline human female looks like. Delta," she gestured to the wolf girl, "is an example of someone with modifications to give them traits from an animal on our planet. In her case, a wolf, which is a species predatory canine that we eventually domesticated into dogs."

"I'm not domesticated," Delta grumbled.

"It shows," Alpha sniped with a smile, earning a glare.

What she had said both was and wasn't a lie, but it was absolutely a load of bullshit. I had the technology to do all of that, and in fact now that Alpha said it, I made a note to look into spreading the technology to do exactly that.

If we're offering new, designer bodies to people, our pool of colonists just expanded greatly. Amputees, people who were paralyzed, and people with degenerative diseases could all be given new bodies without those problems-fit and healthy, ready to go to a new world. But why stop there? There's a very large population of elderly. Most of them are still in their right minds. I'm sure many of them will jump at the chance to switch to a new, young, fit body-even if a condition for getting it was settling a new world, learning a new trade or skill and being useful, and finding someone to have children with. Every one of those bodies could come with many of the modifications mine has-biotics and some cybernetics at least. Yeah, doing that ASAP.

Of course, the lie was to hide their nature as AI. I hadn't given any standing orders on it, but I suspected that Alpha was being cautious.

"This is actually our first contact with another race. I was kind of expecting tentacles and radial biology or something, not bipeds," I gestured at them. "And certainly not a race that looks so similar to our own. It seems like we've got a lot to talk about. Tell you what. I've got an archive of Earth culture on the Lone Wolf. How about I send you over some stuff to look at? Music, literature, video. I've got an entire image repository of pictures of our home planet, peoples, and their cultures. If you've got something similar, I'd love to see it. I know you've probably got to go report back to someone about us, and your big ships down there look like they have a few days to go before they're fully discharged. I'd like to continue this discussion later. Maybe move on to talks of other things, once we know each other a bit better. It's a big, wide galaxy and we haven't been out in it for long. You've got yourselves a very large fleet here and look like you know what you're doing. Perhaps we can sit down, talk, and find ways we can help each other out."

Admiral Haal'Raan nodded. "Yes, we'd appreciate that. Thank you for understanding. I'll have my people send some things over. Shall we reconvene in one standard day?"

I raised an eyebrow at that. "How do you measure time?"

The man paused, before chuckling. "Of course. That's not in the language pack. We'll have our computers do some measurements and we can work out an appropriate conversion between your system and ours."

"Sounds good, admiral. I'll see you then."

We disconnected and, a few moments later, we had our conversion. A countdown timer started for 27:45:00. "It's not precise. It's actually a minute and a few seconds off, but I wanted to give you a little time to prepare," Alpha explained.

"Thanks, Alpha."

"Ah! They sent stuff!" Delta announced. "I've already sent our stuff. Praise me too!"

Laughing, I reached out and petted her head. "Thanks, Delta. Good girl."

"Mm!" she nodded, bumping her head under my hand.

"I've begun translating the things the Quarians sent," Alpha put in, and I heard a hopeful note in her voice. Rolling my eyes, I reached out and pulled her up onto the arm of my chair, giving her a squeeze.

"Good girl, Alpha."

"Ee! "

Ignoring the happy squeak from the elf, I brought up some of the materials in my Focus, starting with history texts. I wanted to see just how edited what they had given us was, based on what I remembered of the series. If they mentioned the Geth, I would be surprised.

Right, first though, let me just get started on streamlining the process for making a new body and transferring into it, so other people can start doing it. Cosmetic mods, too. Can't forget that.

"I'll go make you breakfast and let you know when it's ready," Alpha said, sliding off the chair.

"Thanks, Alpha."

Over the course of the next eight days, we spent nearly every day in talks with the Quarians. They had so many questions and wanted to talk about so many different topics, that we had to split the load between myself and Alpha. Delta… Delta was a good girl, but she was very task oriented, and talking bored her. I could see she was already getting bored, antsy, and ready to get moving.

On the eighth day, ships started coming up from the surface and docking, returning their crew. We were invited to a video call with the people in charge of the Migrant Fleet, the Conclave-though the only ones really asking questions were the Admiralty Board, who had obviously been prepared with a list of questions beforehand.

We spent hours answering various questions and, as it went on, I noticed a distinct theme. Finally, I decided to just get to the heart of the matter.

"Look, admirals," I cut in before they could ask another question. "I get it. You're playing politics for your entire race, so you're taking the safe route here. But as happy as I am to answer whatever questions you want to ask in a back and forth discussion, not an interrogation, I'm not a politician, a diplomat, or a military man. So, let's stop beating around the bush and get to the point. I can guess at the actual questions you want to ask. So let's start there."

I gestured and a question wrote itself beneath me on the video I was sending to them. " Are humans a threat to quarians? That's the big one, isn't it?"

The admiralty board looked at each other, before the woman on the end spoke up. "I'm sure you can see why we would be concerned. We made a mistake, and because of that, we've lost our home world and have only these ships left. We are looked down upon by the Council races and anyone who wishes to do business with them, or eventually join the council. We've become wary of outsiders."

Yeah, they had actually been upfront about the Geth and their removal from the Citadel right from the start. I had been pretty surprised, but that boded well for future negotiations. On the other hand, the more jaded and cynical part of me wondered what they were hiding, if not the Geth.

"Yes, I do understand. I could ask you the same. Are the quarians a threat to humanity? And I imagine the answer is probably the same on both sides: only if you make yourself a threat to us. Again, you're the first alien species we've had contact with. We're out here looking to expand our territory and, now that we know there's other intelligent life out in the galaxy, we're much more interested in making friends than enemies.

"I'm sure that back on Earth, there are plenty of people who are going to hate the idea of sharing the galaxy with anyone. They're probably going to hate you and every other race out there. There may be those that hate you not because of your race, but because of what you did with the Geth. Our popular culture has speculated on exactly this sort of scenario before, and there's been no consensus on how AI should be handled, or even whether it should be employed. Likewise, I'm sure there are people among your number who hate the idea of every other species, or who will hate humans-either because we're alien to you, or because of the things we've done in our own past. They're welcome to. You're free to have your opinions, so long as you're not shooting at us. Just so long as you show us the same respect."

Leaning forward in my chair, I swept my eyes over the gathered admirals, meeting their eyes through their helmets. "But for as many humans as there are that will hate you, for as many of you that there are that will hate us, there are more on both sides that will welcome the other with open arms. We've dreamed of contact with a friendly race since we first realized the possibility that we might not be alone. From the first man to set foot on our moon, to here and now, there are those of us who have longed to meet those people from beyond the stars. We don't want to be your enemy. You don't want to be ours. You said it yourself-you don't have many friends left. We don't have any friends out here at all. So, let's remedy that."

I gestured again and another question appeared. " Are humans armed? Yes. We don't have as many ships as you yet, but what we lack in numbers we make up for in firepower. However, refer back to the first question. It doesn't matter how many ships we have or how powerful they are, if we aren't planning to use them against you. We are absolutely using them to protect our borders and planets, but our allies have nothing to worry about from them."

Another question appeared on screen. " Are humans willing to ally with the quarians? I can't speak for Earth, but I can speak for Eden Prime, Terra Nova, and every other planet I directly control. I can guess however, and the answer is probably yes for Earth, and definitely yes for my people."

A final question appeared on screen. " Are humans willing to allow quarians a home and travel within their systems? Which is the one you've been working up to. Do we have a spare habitable world we're willing to give you? The answer is yes. The longer answer is how many do you need?"

There were gasps and a sudden uproar of sound from the Conclave, while the Admiralty tried to restore order. Eventually, they got it close enough, and one of the admirals asked, "How can you guarantee that? How can you just casually offer us a planet? Not just any planet, but as you're implying, a garden world. Surely your space is not so rich in garden worlds that you can just offer them up."

I grinned. Beside me, Alpha giggled. "Well, that's the thing. I haven't been… entirely honest with you. I'm not some kind of leader among my people, but I am the human with the most advanced technology among our people. I have terraforming technology that I've been deploying. I started with a moon and two of the worlds in our home system. In less than three years, they've gone from barren rocks," I sent an image to the feed of Luna, Mars, and Mercury as they were before, "to the crown jewels of humanity."

I had expected it to take upwards of fifty years, but geometric progression is geometric. The moon, Mars, and Mercury were all stable and habitable-though Mercury was off limits to anyone but myself.

I sent them the images of those three celestial bodies as they were today-lush and verdant, covered in green, blue, and white of plants, ocean, and clouds. "I've been seeding terraforming technology to every uninhabited planet I've passed. I have an automated network of drones spreading out across our territory and doing the same with every world capable of sustaining life, if all it lacks is an atmosphere, water, and time. At last count, I have dozens that will be ready for colonization within the next two years, and even more every year after that, as my drones spread. Right now, there are multiple worlds I'd be willing to share with the quarians-including Terra Nova and Eden Prime. And if you're worried about resources, don't be-I have drones that mine asteroids and planets that wouldn't sustain life, to supply all the resources we'll ever need. If you're concerned about element zero in particular, I have technology that can create it from other matter."

There was another explosion of sound from the quarian side of the call and I sat back and waited with a smile. Delta let out a bored huff and slid off the arm of the chair, moved around in front of me, and dropped her head in my lap. Reaching down, I petted the frustrated girl as she closed her eyes, her tail wagging back and forth as she enjoyed the attention.

"So, how have things been?"

Victor eyed me skeptically. "Progressing well. Cut the bullshit, Leon. Why have you blocked off the equatorial region and several areas towards the poles of Terra Nova? I know it's a desert, but the colonists are on my ass about it. And I see you're putting in priority build orders for Eden Prime. What the hell's going on?"

"Can't get anything past you, can I?" I chuckled, earning an annoyed look. "You want the good news first, or the good news?"

Blinking, he asked, "The good news?"

"Good news! We're not alone in the universe!" I grinned.

"Oh my god-"

"Also good news: I made first contact with an alien race!"

The man wobbled where he stood, before moving over and dropping into a seat on his couch. "You, you made first contact? With a sentient alien race? A peaceful sentient alien race?"

"Are you getting old? Clean your ears out. Or transfer to a new body. I'm sure you saw that pop in the build order, too," I prodded and he sent me an incredulous look. "Yes. A peaceful, sentient alien race. I'm bringing them to Terra Nova. I'm going to let them settle there, as long as they don't mind bumping elbows with humans."

"Oh my god, we have to tell everyone-"

"Yeah, you get on that. I'll send you the recordings. In the meantime, get your ass in gear and park the First Out over Terra Nova. Put her in orbit stable relative to the mass relay, so she's the first thing anyone coming from that direction will see. I'm not worried that they're going to attack us, but I do want to send a message."

Frowning, Victor looked up into the feed, his eyes meeting mine. "'A message?' What message could our colony ship possibly send?"

"Mm. Well, you see, they've got over fifty thousand ships." His mouth dropped open at that. "However, the largest of them is about a mile and three quarters, give or take." With a thought, I sent over a scan of a quarian liveship, complete with tonnage estimate and observed energy output. "Those big ones aren't armed, but just because they aren't now doesn't mean they can't be. 'Colony ship' she may be, she's not unarmed. The First Out is a mile of things they haven't ever seen before, covered in more weapons than any five ships in their fleet combined. When it comes to nations, an ally respects you more when they can see what you've got available."

Sitting back in his couch, he asked, "Why not send the Avalon?"

"I want them to respect us, not shit their suits in fear and run away. Anyway, figured I'd let you know. We'll be there in a few days."

"What?! Wait, no-!"

I laughed and hung up.

Links to my stuff.

Sine's Dumping Ground for Decommissioned Projects.

Fanfic

Original

My subscribestar

. Commissions by Subscribestar or , $10/1k words.

Now with Discord!

Uninspired

Mass Effect, Inspired Inventor

Leon Reynolds. Experience: 0xp. Points: 12745.

Tech Trees:

1. Akira. -100 points.

2. Firefly. -100 points.

3. Alien. -100 points.

4. Mass Effect X. -1000 points.

5. Stargate VIII. -1000 points.

6. Marvel (Cinematic Universe) VIII. -1000 points.

Upgrades:

1. Quality Assurance. -20 points.

- The best diagnosticians can all tell what's wrong just by stepping into the room. You can tell when a piece of equipment within the range of your senses-biological or otherwise-is in need of maintenance, is about to fail, what is failing, how, and why.

2. Tire Kicker. -20 points.

- You now have the ability to tell what's in a tech tree before you buy it.

3. Lifetime Warranty. -20 points.

- Any piece of tech installed in your body is good for the lifetime of your body, unless damaged by outside forces. Your cybernetic components will no longer degrade.

Tech Tree

1. Mass Effect IX.

2. Stargate VII.

3. Marvel (Cinematic Universe) VII.

4. Big Hero 6 (Movie Universe) Max.

5. Battle Angel Alita (Manga) Max.

6. Terminator Max.

7. Cyberpunk Max.

8. Horizon (Game) Max.

9. Arpeggio of Blue Steel Max.

Upgrades

1. Fast Learner.

2. Mechanical Savant.

3. MacGyver's Apprentice.

4. Nimble Fingers.

5. Crash Override.

6. Bishop Administrator.

7. Sell By.

8. Neural Mancer.

9. CAD Master.

10. Russian Roulette.

11. Delayed Gratification.

12. Gacha Whaler.

Two years of waiting and this is the bullshit it gives me? Those settings are all relatively low tech. And as much as I loved Firefly, it's not worth the investment. Maybe it would've been right at the beginning, if it came up before Stargate, but it didn't. Fuck it, I'll buy the upgrades and use Russian Roulette.

Sixty points worth of upgrades and three hundred points spent rolling a new set of options later, I sighed at three more low-tier options-especially now that I could just dig into them and actually see what they would bring to the table. Considering my options for a moment, I selected Gacha Whaler.

Thirty-six hundred points?! What the actual- Nng. Okay. Okay. Ten times the points I'd need to actually just buy the options outright to replenish them completely. This had sure as fuck better be worth it. Oh, wait, hang on. I can choose to do it by section. So, just the upgrades to see if it gives me something worth it.

Upgrades:

1. Preview Mode. -200 points.

- You can pay to see what's coming up next in the store.

2. Liminality. -1000 points.

- You stand at the border between physical and digital. Human consciousness and neural network. You no longer need to fear losing anything by crossing the threshold.

3. Toy Box I. -1000 points.

- You gain access to higher tech level options directly, instead of having to rely on random chance! Grants access to the 1000 point tech menu.

Well, that's… frightening, I mused, shaking my head at the second option. The first would be useful to have and was pretty much 'name on tin.' Nothing to get into detail about there. The second, Liminality, I was fairly certain was obliquely talking about losing the soul in going from biological to digital, and that it would prevent that from happening. It was vague, but I bought it just in case. It shouldn't even affect me given what the highest levels of the Alita tech tree had, but… better to be safe than sorry.

The third option was what really had me interested. That explains why everything has been kind of random in quality and how advanced it is, and why I got trash these last two times. Because it is random. It's not a level based system. But if this raises the pool from 100 point options to 1000 point options… then I guess everything should be better by default than MCU or Stargate? Those have good stuff at the higher tiers, and I'm pretty sure the 1000 point tiers for both get up into dealing with system-affecting tech. I guess they were in the low tier list because they require a bit of buildup to get to where they're useful on a large scale. With everything costing 1000 points minimum now though, I should reset Delayed Gratification. Set it to refresh once every ten years, then go from there.

I shrugged and bought it immediately, then paid to have my options for tech trees replaced again, using Russian Roulette.

Tech Trees:

1. Code Geass. -1000 points.

2. Star Wars. -1000 points.

3. Nier. -1000 points.

4. Mass Effect X. -1000 points.

5. Stargate VIII. -1000 points.

6. Marvel (Cinematic Universe) VIII. -1000 points.

Yes! I mentally cheered, before frowning. Wait. I remember Geass. How the fuck is that worth a thousand points? Or is this just a case of dumping everything in the tree into one level? Guess I'll see.

I was down to 9285 points, which should be good enough for now. I started with Nier and maxed it out at level IV for 4000 points. Considering my other two options, I bought the first two levels of both for another 4000. Code Geass had only one more level, so I went ahead and maxed it out, leaving me with just 285. As I had thought, nearly everything I was expecting was in the first two levels, while the last level was collective consciousness tech.

Sadly, the lower levels of Star Wars weren't spectacular, even at the 1000 point price point. They would have been, if I didn't already have better because I'd invested in Stargate and had been combining tech. Even its drive tech was subpar at the moment. I didn't really see a need to develop it when what I had was equal to what they had or better in some ways and the methods of travel seemed kind of mutually exclusive.

However, it did have some things of note. Namely, Star Wars came with its own variant on 'plasma' weapons. The crystals required to make their blasters, cannons, and even the iconic lightsaber were well within my ability to make, along with the tech to power and create those things. So, I added them all to the list of new weapons to field test against my own weapons.

Probably the best thing I got access to from the Star Wars tree was the molecular structure and treatment methods of beskar. I sent it on to Alpha for immediate material testing, where the Avalon would synthesize some and then test it against other metals, see how it held up to various forces and energies, and then see what we could alloy it with. I was looking forward to seeing how it stood up compared to NTC alloy and if maybe we could add it to the mix, or replace something.

Unfortunately, some things in Geass didn't really work, or had no purpose here. There was no code, no Geass, no collective unconsciousness to my knowledge, and no way to produce any of them. So the supernatural related stuff was worthless.

That was fine by me, however. They had Sakuradite, which immediately went the route of eezo and the other exotic metals/minerals into testing to see what it could do. I was pretty stoked to see if I could combine it with naquadah, trinium, eezo, and now beskar to further enhance my arc reactors. Especially if I could use eezo to refine it first.

The beam weapon tech wasn't really great compared to what I already had, but their Blaze Luminous shielding, Absolute Defense System, and Energy Wing System were all very much of interest. Another type of shielding tech based on different principles to the shields I had now, to stack or rotate with what I had already was always nice. The Energy Wing System allowed for cheaper VTOL and lingering than repulsors, and anything equipped with both repulsors and the EWS could use the EWS to maneuver or linger while using repulsors for energy weapons, before switching to repulsors for faster flight.

And then there was the fact that I could produce humanoid mecha, now. I had been holding off on designing a fighter before now, on the hopes of getting something like this. Something the locals, and thus the Reapers, had never seen before. I had actually been hoping for Gundam, but I'd take what I could get. I could incorporate my current tech into them, after I finished testing the new materials, and hopefully improve them significantly. I would just need some crack pilots to fly them…

Nier was actually the winner of the day. Human-level intelligence AI, absolutely devoted to humans by default. Engineered specifically for combat against hostile alien machines as perfect soldiers. Designed to be able to transfer their consciousness from one body to the next and easily back their consciousness up in the event they were destroyed.

We didn't have Maso energy in this universe, thank God, but I could easily make them work without it. There would only be a few issues, in that the systems that allowed them to summon/dismiss their weapons wouldn't work. I would go ahead and replace all the materials used in their construction with superior materials for better performance and make some changes to their basic equipment-such as replacing their clothes with the same smart matter derived stuff I used, and giving them better weapons.

Much more expensive to build than terminator units, but way smarter. Terminators are disposable, the Nier androids aren't. So, send them in units. I can cut way down on unit types as well, here. No reason to have Battler units when Executioners are superior, just don't tell them what they were originally created for, or use them for that, and it'll be fine. D units seem kind of superfluous, but… give them way better shields and power sources and we could have one tank gunship fire. Might as well give them a big fucking gun while we're at it. Heavy weapons. Make them the anchor for the unit.

Healers aren't really needed in the way they would have been, according to their design specs. However, having a unit on hand that can repair things in the field and heal biologicals? Fucking sold. I'll slap a micro-fabricator in them capable of fabricating multi-use nanites. Give them a piece of equipment, probably a backpack-yeah, backpack. Stick an enhanced arc reactor and a fabricator in it, and a teleporter. Give it some microbot tentacles equipped with the usual equipment so it can grab things from the environment to break down and convert into whatever it needs. Preload it with patterns for weapons, ammo, replacement parts, more arc reactors so they can stay charged in the field. Add medical programming to it, so it can fix wounds or replace limbs, organs, and parts in the field with cybernetic replacements to do the big work that medical nanites can't do in a timely manner. Add a few hundred shrunken Terminator units in the backpack for support…

A scanner would round out a four-man squad. Equip them with cloaking and noise canceling technology, better sensors, better hacking toolkits, and sniper rifles. Also, better comms gear. Just install a subspace communicator and some storage so they can better facilitate emergency backups and transfers. Maybe give them some small, cloaked drones for better scouting. Monowire for if they need to get in close and assassinate someone. Oh! Give them Pym tech, so they can shrink themselves and allies to hide and get into places they otherwise shouldn't.

… Actually, why not equip all of the field models with built in repulsor arrays on their hands and feet, for flight and combat? Use the same nanite system as the Iron Man armor, but since they aren't producing armor and just the repulsors, it can be stripped way down. It'd remove the need for flight units entirely. They could do HALO insertions from orbit, if they stick close to the Defender until they make it into atmo low enough that they won't burn up. Yeah, sounds good.

Finally, Operators and Commanders. Not much needed to do there other than give both a bit more processing power. Actually, hang on. I could make a new model. Model it off the Scout, but give it the processing power of an Operator. Call it a Pilot model. Use them as fighter pilots for the Knightmare Frames and anything that isn't being piloted by one of my mental model AI girls-so troop and cargo transports, gunships, that sort of thing.

As I made up improved designs, but held off on finalizing anything until after the results of the new materials tests were in, I considered just what I could use them for. What was I going to do with my own personal army?

Well, for one, put a four man group plus Operator with every single corvette I send out. Larger groups on larger ships-with the bigger ones fielding entire armies of androids. If terminator units are going to be the bulk of my ground troops, I could have them commanded directly by Operator units from orbit, or directed in the field by the other units. But just having them babysit the ground troops would be a waste. They're better used for special ops. So, give them their own dedicated fleets of frigates and corvettes with no human crew. Each corvette would have an operator and a squad of four. Frigates are big enough to store a couple of fighters or some other equipment, so let them pick what they want out of a list and swap it out as needed for each mission. Crew on those frigates would be one Commander, one Operator per team. They should be able to hold 2-300 human crew, so that's 300 androids and their gear. That's sixty five man teams if we count each operator as the fifth man to every four field operatives. Call it six pilots to be able to rotate them out if needed. I'll have the shipgirls flying their ships solo here, so we can convert a lot of space into room for Operators to work.

As for the Commanders, there has to be a command structure. Eh, do it by ship. Operators on corvettes report back either to their frigate or mothership for orders and to give reports. Commanders on frigates command the troops on those frigates and attached pack of ten corvettes. Groups of, call it five frigate groups report to cruisers, with the Commanders of the frigates reporting up to the ones on the cruisers. Those cruisers report up to a carrier or dreadnought mothership, depending on which they're attached to. Let's say twenty cruisers per carrier or dreadnought. Dreadnoughts and carriers report up to super dreadnoughts, report up to capital ships, report up to super capital ships, report to… someone who would then report to me. I can't throw all of that on Alpha.

So, system fleet structure, top down. One thousand mile super capital ship-which acts as a super carrier and shipyard. Ten one hundred mile capital ships under each. Attached to each capital ship are ten of the ten mile super dreadnoughts. Attached to each of those are five one mile dreadnoughts and five one mile carriers. Under those are twenty cruisers each, under which are five frigates each, under which are ten corvettes each. Not counting fighters, that makes for each fleet having 1,121,111 ships.

Every fleet. Which I intend to make for every system we inhabit.

The council is going to shit itself.

It's gonna be great.

That they were going to be staffed by androids, and separate from the small fleets I was giving each human colony (which would consist of that structure from a single dreadnought down, all to be crewed by humans with some supplemental androids) presented some interesting possibilities. And questions. Such as, should I allow for duplicates? Should I allow them all to network together, by type or all of them together regardless of type? I was leaning towards yes to allowing duplicates, if someone wanted to copy themselves, but a hard no to any sort of network. That seemed like a huge vulnerability just waiting to be exploited. Not to mention, it could lead to a loss of individuality-and I wanted every one of them to see themselves as individuals. Not disposable or replaceable, but each and every one of them valued individually for who they were.

Androids and gynoids with a human fetish. All of them technically sailors. Imagine how bad it's going to be when they take shore leave on a human colony.

My mental image was of a swarm of millions of boys and girls begging for headpats and praise from any human who would pay them attention.

Two years after making first contact with the quarians, eight years after the menu came into my life…

"You're sure it's safe?"

I took a deep breath in through my nose, even though the Remy I was in didn't need to breathe. "Admiral, for the very last time, I'm sure. Countless humans have gone through this process. We've spent the last year mapping quarian brains and doing dry runs just to make sure it would work. It. Will. Work. And if you ask me one more time… I am going to throw you into that chair and hold you down while I flip the switch myself, just so I don't have to hear any more waffling."

"Heh," admiral Haal'Raan vas Tonbay chuckled, before shaking his head. "Very well. Let's proceed, then."

Somehow, of all the quarians in the no longer migrating fleet, one of the first I'd spoken to and one of their ranking officers, had either volunteered or been voluntold to go first. It could have gone either way, and honestly, I didn't particularly care. All I cared about was proving for the admiralty that the body transfer process worked. Once they were convinced, then nearly their entire race would begin the process.

The admiral sat down in the chair provided and I tapped into my Focus and selected the appropriate commands. A moment later, his body went limp. A tube in the middle of the room opened, revealing the nude, purple form of a male quarian. A quarian with human hands and feet.

"God, put some clothes on. No one wants to see that thing," I held up a hand, covering my sight of alien dong.

Quarians actually looked shockingly similar to humans, naturally. Same facial structure, hair, eyebrows, bodies practically identical, with the only real differences being the hands, legs/knees, and feet. Well, those had been the only real differences. Now, those were no more.

Why opt to change that part of themselves?

That was my fault, actually. I'd given the admiralty each access to a Remy so they could speak with representatives from Earth 'in person,' so to speak. All but one of them had immediately loved the hands, because they were far more dexterous than their own hands. As for the feet… well, I was pretty sure more than one set of male and female admirals had taken some time to explore their Remy bodies together, and that was one of the things they had decided to change as a matter of cosmetic preference.

And now, there was a version of quarians with human hands and feet-completely genetically viable, heritable traits, but incompatible with other quarians.

Of course, that wasn't the only change that I'd helped them make. The benefits of a new body, even changing their bodies to suit their preferences, wouldn't have pushed over ninety percent of the species to opt for new bodies. No, that had to do with the fact that these bodies had a good immune system, and I had eliminated that dextro-levo diet bullshit and the root cause of it, allowing them to eat anything, just as humans could.

I might have also maybe made sure that they could breed with humans and produce viable hybrids, as all of the new bodies were about half human now anyway.

Haal'Raan stepped out of the tube, stumbling a bit as he took a moment to get his balance. Taking a deep breath, he held it a moment before letting it out, and taking another as he began testing the limits of his new body. "This is amazing!"

"I wasn't kidding about the clothes. Seriously. Tell your focus to make some," I grumbled.

The man chuckled and a moment later, he was covered in an outfit that looked nothing like the typical quarian suit. "To be able to wear normal clothes…" he shook his head as a smile crossed his lips. "To breathe the air and not have to worry about getting sick."

"I'll do you one better," I said, nodding towards the door. "Come on."

His grin widened as he followed eagerly, looking around everywhere. "To see without the need of a visor. No constant light filter. It's been years since the last time I took my helmet off."

We took a lift down to the bottom floor of the building and stepped out into the fresh, crisp air of northern Terra Nova. As we went, I tapped into my Focus and placed an order.

It was only a short walk before we were entering a restaurant-one of the few structures allowed that weren't one of the miles tall buildings that served as housing and offices, inside city limits. Outside city limits, people were free to build however they wanted, so long as it didn't screw up the environment or cause problems for anyone.

I held the door open for Haal'Raan as we stepped inside. 'Fast food' had survived as a concept, but it had been vastly improved and strictly regulated on the new colonies. They weren't allowed to serve the sort of slop I remembered from back on my original Earth. So when I picked up the two trays waiting for us and took them, and our drinks, outside to eat what was waiting for us was delicious-all the ingredients made locally and put together that morning.

"This is…?" Haal'Raan asked, looking down on it. "Keelah, that smells good!"

"It's a hamburger. A beef patty on a bun, with ketchup and mustard, lettuce, tomato, and onion. Those are fries," I pointed to the pack of french fries, before shifting to a bottle of ketchup on the table. "And that's ketchup, for dipping."

He watched for a moment as I picked mine up and began eating. "And it's safe-"

"I will hold you down…"

The admiral held up both hands in surrender, before carefully picking his burger up and taking a bite. "Ooh my," he groaned, and I chuckled.

"Beats the hell out of that crap you've been eating, right?"

"You have no idea," he answered around a mouthful as he began to sample everything on the plate.

"Well, make sure you tell your people. If they start tomorrow, we can have them done inside a year. Just in time for New Rannoch to finish the terraforming process. I understand that those of your people who don't want to take new bodies have opted for medical nanites to boost their immune system and decided to settle at the equator for now, and then move to New Rannoch upon its completion?"

"They have," the admiral nodded. "Thank you again-"

I waved him off. "Don't worry about it. If the situations were reversed, I'd hope someone would do the same for us." Picking up a couple of fries, I took a moment to swipe up some ketchup and eat them. Perfectly cut, cooked to just the right temperature, with just the right amount of salt. I made a mental note to grab some in person the next time I was in the neighborhood.

"So," I sent him a grin, "what do you think the Council is going to say about your people walking around without their suits?"

"Mm. Well, they won't. Not for a while. We already have plans in place. If this went well, and so far everything seems to be going very well," he grinned, waving a fry before popping it in his mouth. "We've given orders to a few of our fleet to spread out and find those of our people on Pilgrimage, and to stop by the Citadel to quietly collect them. Pilgrimage is canceled for now, while we settle in, and they deserve to know. They deserve a chance to breathe fresh air and everything else we've been missing. There has been some talk amongst the Conclave of withdrawing from Citadel space for a time. Severing ties for a few years, to build ourselves back up, while we have the chance. Do some much needed maintenance. Perhaps even arm our ships."

"You're thinking about trying for Rannoch."

Haal'Raan winced, then nodded. "Yes. After we take a few years to recover and rebuild here."

Humming, I finished off my burger and leaned back in my chair. I sent a ping to Alpha.

Leon: Alpha, what's the status of the First Fleet?

I only had to wait a moment for a response.

Alpha: Ah, I meant to make it a surprise when we came back to Eden Prime.… Surprise?

Alpha sent me a data packet and I quickly read over it, my mouth falling open slightly. The First Fleet had been completed, thanks to the wonders of geometric growth. They had even incorporated the very newest materials and technology I had submitted to Alpha for testing.

Over a million ships, ready to go.

Multiple zero point modules powering each ship, with redundant backup seventh generation arc reactors-a badassium ring around a spherical Sakuradite core, with an alloy of naquadah-trinium-beskar wire creating a super conductive magnet around that, encased in more NTB alloy; all of which had gone through the eezo/graviton enhancement process. Hypermatter NTB armor. Multiple shield systems. Enough firepower to destroy planets.

All of them, mental model AI shipgirls, waiting to meet me-though, there was a bit of a twist there. The shipgirls had done what I hadn't wanted the android girls to do. Every ship of a type had merged their consciousness across a network, syncing their experiences. So every corvette was Delta. Not some version of Delta-no, because they were completely synced, every single one of them was Delta. Likewise, every super capital ship would be Alpha. Which meant that thankfully, there were only five other mental models I hadn't met yet waiting to meet me.

Every one of those ships was crewed by Nier type android girls and boys, just as I'd been planning. Every last one of them built with every bit of new tech we had available to make them a fighting force second to none. And of those, apparently I had staff I needed to meet that represented both the various models and the command staff specifically.

According to Alpha, there were seven other super capital ships working on constructing their own fleets in various human systems-and more planned, for the systems not on the mass relay network. Systems that were in the process of being terraformed, or where terraforming had finished, and Alpha was planning to have humans grown and raised as soon as she could build and deploy a new type of caretaker android to look after them. She didn't plan to stop until she hit the trillions, in numbers of ships.

"Huh."

"Hm?" the quarian across from me hummed as he sucked on the last of his soda. "Ah, all gone."

"Refills are free," I pointed out, and his eyes lit up in excitement. He made to stand and I interrupted. "Why don't you let me take a crack at it?"

"At a refill?" he asked, confused.

"At Rannoch." His mouth opened as panic filled his face. "Don't worry, I'll be careful. I just want to go see if I can talk to them."

"You can't talk to the Geth! The machines will kill you! Even if you take that dreadnought, it won't be enough to give them pause. They'll just send more ships-their own dreadnoughts."

"Nah, it'll be fine," I waved him off. "Why would I take a colony ship? I'm just going to talk."

He rolled his eyes, and I was amused to see that we shared that gesture in common. "Still sticking to that line. 'It's just a colony ship,' you say, when that beast has more weapons on it than any Turian dreadnought by half. You're insane."

I grinned, before visibly, obviously looking around us. Finally, I locked eyes with him as he abruptly got the message. That all of this, everything he saw around us, was only possible because of me. It was almost entirely all my tech, or directly created by my tech. That he wouldn't even be sitting here if it weren't for me.

My Focus pinged with a message from Delta and I chuckled. "While we've been talking, the Lone Wolf has already started moving. Thanks to your maps of all the systems and relays you know, we don't need to explore those relays. I'll send drones just to verify, but you've made my job easier. Specifically, I don't have to hunt for Rannoch. I can just go straight there."

I could have gotten there faster, but I wanted to coordinate everything with the First Fleet and make sure I wasn't going in without backup. So it was more that we would begin the operation in twelve hours, but we'd be parked outside the system long before then.

"Keelah, this is madness," he muttered.

I shrugged. Standing up, I gathered my tray and trash and the admiral followed as I went to drop everything off. "I suppose this is as good a time to learn about human nature as any. We're all a little mad. The people that are here? They all volunteered to follow a 'billionaire playboy' and a 'boy genius' on a colony ship no one else had ever set foot on, using a method of FTL that none of them understand, to go to a planet that might just be worse than the one they were leaving, without bringing supplies with them because I told them it wasn't necessary, all for the chance to be pioneers. And then, when the first group reported back that it was all good, more joined them. People took a risk trading up their bodies for improved models, but they did it because the benefits outweighed the risks, and we already had people who had been through the process. All throughout human history, we've pushed ever forward. We've braved countless dangers. Even when we knew the place we were going was hostile, filled with people looking to kill us, we still went. Going to greater lengths, new heights, all in search of new horizons."

Dropping the tray off, I turned to the admiral and smiled. "If you think your little mistake is going to stop a determined human, you are sorely mistaken. I'll let you know how it goes."

With that, I had my Focus beam my Remy back to my locked apartment on Terra Nova. Opening my eyes on the Lone Wolf, I found Delta perched on the arm of my chair, staring into my eyes from an inch away. She pulled back slightly and I saw a wide, toothy grin on her lips as her tail swished back and forth.

"I love a good hunt~."

Links to my stuff.

Sine's Dumping Ground for Decommissioned Projects.

Fanfic

Original

My subscribestar

. Commissions by Subscribestar or , $10/1k words.

Now with Discord!

Uninspired

Mass Effect, Inspired Inventor

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.

Links to my stuff.

Sine's Dumping Ground for Decommissioned Projects.

Fanfic

Original

My subscribestar

. Commissions by Subscribestar or , $10/1k words.

Now with Discord!

Uninspired

Mass Effect, Inspired Inventor

When everything was said and done, the geth were isolated to a small system within the Terminus system. We shut down their mass relay and stationed guards, then quarantined it from the other end. Ships approaching the relay would get a warning that the relay was closed and the system beyond it was quarantined. If they tried to reactivate the relay, they would be destroyed-no further warnings, no survivors allowed, they were to be killed to the last.

Intensive scans of Rannoch showed that the war had caused the biosphere to fail and, within a few short years, the planet would be completely uninhabitable. There was evidence of extensive use of nuclear weapons and much of the surface was irradiated. According to what was in the information the Quarians gave me, that was due to the Geth deciding to make the planet uninhabitable for biologicals. It would take a lot of work to correct, and I'd basically have to raze everything on the surface to decontaminate it.

So, when I booted up my Remy and made my report to the quarian government-which had now expanded from just the admiralty board to leaders representing the planetside populations who had settled on the worlds I'd offered them-I broke the bad news to them and gave them the option of terraforming Rannoch. They took me up on it and I sent equipment to the planet. Thankfully, they had seedstock and genetic samples of much of their planet's natural ecology, and there were viable samples of much of the rest still on the planet, so I programmed the Horizon tech to try to repopulate the planet with its natural species and only fill in the blanks with Earth native samples when there was no other option. Estimates said maybe fifty years before the planet was cleaned up and livable again, due to just how much of the surface would need to be run through the replicator just to put it back together in such a way that it wasn't hot.

With the Rannoch/geth situation settled for the time being, and the quarians settling in nicely, I turned my sights elsewhere. I had unfinished business on Earth, so I started there.

All of the projects I'd been holding off on for Earth, I pulled the trigger on simultaneously. I had given them more than enough time to prepare and see how things had gone on the new colonies. With global satellite coverage and power to spare for the transporter/replicator, I skipped drone deployment and just started replacing everything that needed replacing, overnight-moving in a wave across the planet coinciding with midnight as the world turned.

Pollution, waste, garbage, landfills, chemical and nuclear waste dumps on the surface, buried, or under sea, it didn't matter-I beamed them all to a central location for temporary material storage for conversion. That material was quickly converted for use in other projects.

Infrastructure such as roads, rail, power lines, and so on were removed. Most roads were simply removed entirely, not to be replaced at all, while others were replaced with clean, longer lasting, heat dissipating upgraded versions-while the massive snarls that were cities were completely revamped for an entirely different type of vehicle. New, straight, efficient rail lines were laid between every city and town, with long tubes bored through the surface of the Earth to connect some inter-continentally-these were to be used for both mass transit and transportation of goods between cities and countries, replacing trucks, air, and sea shipping. The power lines weren't replaced because my next step was to install wireless power generators, while the telecom lines were actually replaced with better physical replacements, to act as a hardline backup for the new global wireless network I would be setting up.

Cities were entirely redesigned. If a building didn't have historical significance, it had to go-and if it did, it was gutted and remodeled, as I had done in Japan. Taking my cues from Japan as my testbed country, I replaced everything with culturally appropriate replacements for their region-and in places that had abandoned their culture to 'modernize,' I put in things that were historically accurate to a previous time, meaning no more of the 'hyper modern glass and concrete' look. Cities were severely reduced in area horizontally, and instead I built vertically with mile-tall super structures. Businesses and apartments were shuffled around, people teleported as they slept to their new (and improved) accommodations, given a focus if they didn't have one, and if they did they were updated on the situation and their new living situation. Homeless, homeless shelters, tent cities, and so on became a thing of the past overnight as I assigned them their own housing units-and while that wouldn't solve any underlying mental health issues, it did get them somewhere safe, with a roof over their heads and access to food, clean water, and all the amenities. Each home came with all the utilities one would expect, and food could be ordered by focus.

Most hospitals were removed entirely, and those that remained were given new equipment and staffed with android boys and girls who I could guarantee would be more knowledgeable and have a better bedside manner than any doctor or nurse. As for the medical industry, that got a stake to the heart in the form of medical nanite swarms being released, to colonize every living human. Disease officially became a thing of the past and the only reason I left the hospitals was for emergencies. Those nanites would, beginning with the current generation of children, also begin turning out biotics with superhuman enhancement and minor cybernetic improvements. The Citadel races were going to be in for a surprise, when they discovered that the only people with a higher percentage population of biotics were the Asari-and that humans were rapidly out-breeding them, as humans do.

Transportation within cities was provided one of three ways: by a series of turbo lifts within the cities that could transport people within buildings or even out of them, larger subways for mass transit within the city, and every family who was moved into one of my habitation towers got two new fully automated flying cars while individuals received one. People could walk places or use ground transit if they wanted, using the smaller walking paths and free individual transportation of what amounted to arc reactor powered motorcycles, so they had plenty of options for getting where they wanted-all of which were detailed on their focus.

All factories, plants, power stations, and so on were either revamped or removed entirely. Most of that revamping involved giving them direct access to their own replicator and letting them build whatever they wanted (with a few safety limitations), along with more advanced tools for direct machining-basically, recycling a lot of the old stuff I had used, before I went almost completely to replicators. Chemical plants, and any plant that used chemicals in its processes, went almost entirely replicator based, and had strict environmental protections in place to make sure that no one either in the plant or outside of it were exposed to anything. Power plants were replaced by large current generation arc reactors broadcasting power wirelessly to the entire globe. Large sections of land outside the newly compacted cities, which had once been covered by urban sprawl, were converted to farmland managed by drones-the product of which were transported directly to the consumer upon demand.

Industrial meat processing plants were one of the sticking points I had to get creative with. I could grow genetically engineered meat, I could even use replicators to produce meat from other materials, but it wasn't the same. I'd been experimenting with it for a while and there was no way to get the flavor or texture exactly right. The only thing I could really do there was to try and make the entire process more humane. Making a new breed of cattle and chicken specifically engineered and cross bred for meat production, to only be capable of breeding with their own kind, and to be too stupid to suffer or empathize with was the best I could do on the 'animal suffering' end. On the production end, I made sure the plants to process them were almost entirely automated and far cleaner and more efficient than what was available.

Moving out of the cities, the suburban and rural areas got just as many improvements. Individual homes were rebuilt with new materials and connected up to the wireless power and communications network. Any form of 'modular' home was replaced with an actual good, sturdy home. Flying cars replaced personal vehicles for the most part, with the exception of recreational vehicles, which got a retrofit to run off of wireless power. Everyone got access to the same global replicator system to request food and other goods.

Third world countries were upgraded to first world status, as I supplied them with the same sorts of buildings and resources as places like America. Which meant no more favelas and shanty towns, no drinking out of dirty wells, and so on.

With basically every necessity a person had taken care of, and access to the replicator system to take care of wants, with very few restrictions in place on just what and how much could be requested, I had pretty much crashed the global economy overnight-moving Earth from a scarcity based economy to post-scarcity. And just to make sure that no government tried to do something silly, like destroy everything, or ban their citizens from using those features, I made sure that every single citizen was aware that they had the option to leave the planet and move to any human world they wanted to-that planetary borders weren't going to be a thing, unless they intentionally self-segregated. Racial, ethnic, national, and planetary identity were great, certainly-but I wanted to make sure that unless someone committed some kind of crime, that they weren't beholden to their government. They weren't tax chattel anymore.

To facilitate that, I put in the build order and began construction on spaceports and multiple stargates-on and above every planet I had access to. I had worked out how to have multiple outgoing and incoming gates open at once, but unfortunately I could only have one incoming gate of any size open at a time. This meant that I could only have three incoming, primary gates in any system, but I could have multiple outgoing gates active. The space ports were for travel to the different planets within any system, along with moving large volumes of cargo through ship gates.

For Sol, I put the primary incoming gate in the dead center of the United States and constructed a building around it, to facilitate processing and transit of incoming travelers. As for outgoing man-sized gates, I put one in a dedicated building in every major city on every inhabited planet and gave everyone with a focus access to schedule a gate to their destination of choice. Cargo gates likewise went in every major city, with a single primary gate on each end for receiving in their own dedicated buildings, with scanners and access to the transporter network to facilitate moving cargo.

As for ship gates, every system I'd been to had gotten one-all of them large enough to fit the Avalon and her entire accompanying fleet in one transport. Those had dedicated control facilities built to make sure there were no accidents-and no attempts to take the gates by invaders. Any ship wanting to use one would park in orbit along the event horizon's plane, outside the ring. Transit in front of the ring was banned except for incoming and outgoing travel and anyone using them were expected to be clear of the splash zone inside of ten minutes-with warnings explicitly given that anything inside the splash zone when the gate activated would be annihilated by the wormhole's formation. Once parked in orbit, ships could send a request to the gate for a destination and would be sent in groups as the gate activated on a schedule, opening every thirty minutes before closing again. Schedules were maintained across the interplanetary network using subspace FTL communications, so there would be no confusion as to who was opening a wormhole, when, and where.

Once the setup and build orders were complete, I pulled out and left them to it. My colonies everywhere but Earth were already operating on a post-scarcity economy and had figured out barter and a value system for themselves-based on labor and creativity, putting intrinsic value on a person's work and their ideas. Earth would figure it out, or they wouldn't-I honestly didn't care from here. I had already turned my sights elsewhere.

Between the quarians' list of abandoned/unused systems and my own efforts to find systems off the mass relay network using my scout ships, I had a list of places where I could build my own garden worlds off the relay network, build a gate network for, and put a few space gates in those abandoned systems on the fringes of the relay network either for my fleets to use, or for friendly aliens to access specific destinations. Once I built them, I wasn't going to allow anyone access to my network of off-grid garden worlds-including Earth. No, those were going to be a backup, in case something went horribly, horribly wrong and humanity on the known human colonies died.

It didn't really require anything more than giving the green light for the process, since I had all the tech built and mostly tested already. Horizon tech would be sent to terraform those planets. Planetary shields would be put up. Planetary and system defense satellites built. A system fleet equal in size to the First Fleet would be constructed. Stargates would be put on and above each world and linked.

Modified androids would be built and deployed with the express goal of being mothers and fathers to a new generation of humanity, capable of breeding humans with artificial testes and wombs-all guaranteed to be healthy and far, far to the right on the bell curve from birth, before modification. From there, each child would be implanted with a medical nanite swarm that would apply genetic modifications in utero to make them smarter, stronger, more beautiful, and overall just better than baseline humans. From there, they would be enhanced in various ways-with the same eezo/biotics upgrades children on Earth and other human worlds were getting, but also with the partial ascension upgrades for those abilities, followed by the spider-type super soldier serum, along with cybernetic enhancements that grew and adapted with them as they grew. They would all be educated by AI and taught of the past triumphs and follies of mankind on Earth, in the hopes of not repeating history.

I pulled the trigger on that project and handed it off to Alpha and the other girls to manage, expecting to see it come to fruition some time in the next fifty years. Until then, I could step away and let them work.

I looked up from where I was buried in Alpha's tits, cracking an eye open as my Focus chimed with an incoming call. Picking up on audio only, I yawned as she clutched me tighter between her arms and legs, rubbing her face against the top of my head as she breathed in my scent.

"Victor, what's up?" I asked, taking in the man sitting in front of a desk on Eden Prime, according his Focus's location data.

"Leon! Thank goodness! Listen, my young friend. You have to come back!"

Raising an eyebrow, I asked, "Why? What's wrong? No one's said anything about any sort of emergency…"

He hesitated, then sighed. "Not the kind of emergency you're thinking, no. Earth has gone to war with itself."

"And this is my problem… how? I'm not supplying weapons to them. I made sure that the replicators couldn't spit out weapons, in whole or in part, without express approval from a management AI and a damn good reason for one. If Bob wants a new hunting rifle, he can make one. If Uncle Sam wants a bunch of guns, he's shit out of luck."

"Yeah, they figured that out," Victor nodded. "So they've been using their own stockpiles of weapons and using their own production facilities to build more."

I hummed at that. Yeah, okay, that is a thing they could do, yes. Because they're not using the replicators to directly make them and they're using the industrial production facilities, there are fewer limits.

"Still not my problem."

Victor took on a deathly serious look and said, "They launched nukes. I kind of thought it'd be Russia, but no. Israel launched against Saudi Arabia. Their allies launched on Israel. Their allies counter-launched. Everyone with them launched. Israel then launched at every capital within ICBM range."

Laughing, I asked, "And how'd that go for them?"

"You know damn well how it went!" the man growled. "When the nukes launched, everyone panicked. When they were beamed apart and delivered in pieces in front of every government building of those who launched them, the governments panicked. Since then, it's been total war."

Sitting up, to Alpha's dismay, I demanded, "What the fuck are they even fighting over?"

"Territory disputes and control of access to the new technology."

"Huh? No one can control it, that was the point."

"And yet, I've heard from multiple sources that every side thinks that if they win, they can control it," Victor countered.

"Alright. Okay, is the fighting spilling over to anywhere else? Any unrest on any other human colonies? Luna? Mars?"

"No, just Earth. Whatever AI you've got controlling the Earth gates and spaceports shut those down the moment the nukes launched. Everyone else is concerned, but not actually interfering. Not their problem, you know?"

" Yeah, I know," I stressed, reminding him that it wasn't my problem either.

Making a frustrated sound, Victor stood up and began to pace in his office. "I didn't leave the Earth just to watch it tear itself apart, Leon!"

"So don't." The man sent me a confused look and I continued. "Victor, look. This kind of shit is pretty much par for the course for Earth history. You know that. You didn't expect to get to the stars without a little bloodshed over who controls the stars, did you? I expected a war to unify humanity under one banner or split it under several the moment we set out. Either a repeat of the American Revolution or the Civil War-independence from a distant controlling body, or forced unification as one nation, regardless of distance. What you're seeing now is the start of that. First Earth, then it'll spread, as whoever comes out on top on Earth decides to turn their gaze to the other human colonies."

"What am I supposed to do?"

"Well, you've got choices. You can ignore it," I began, ticking off a finger, even though he couldn't see it. "You can quietly pick a side and support them. You can reach out to the other colonies and see what they think and put it up to some sort of vote. You can try to unify the colonies before it happens, that way Earth would face a united front. Or you can do that, and then intervene and break up the conflict, then bring Earth into the fold. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised the colonies have lasted this long without demanding elections or something. Either way, this isn't really a problem I can fix. That is, unless you want me to be the dictator of humanity? I stepped in once with China already. Do you really want a repeat?"

The older man sighed and shook his head. "No." Chuckling, he looked up and asked, "You really could, couldn't you?"

"Yeah… Be glad I'm not the conquering type. I'd rather fuck off into the wider universe and explore than deal with politics and the minutiae of ruling a planet."

"That's why you haven't come back, except by Remy, isn't it?" he asked, dropping into his desk chair and looking ten years older.

"One of the reasons, yeah. Don't worry, I'm not abandoning humanity entirely. I'll pick up when you call and if trouble shows up, I'll probably be there before you have time to call. But I'm not going to tie myself down to one planet, one system, when there's so much out there to explore. You guys are going to have to figure this one out for yourselves. You were fine before I came along, you'll do fine when I'm gone."

With one final, very tired look of exasperation, Victor nodded. "Alright. I'll talk to some people and see what they want to do. Take care of yourself out there, kid."

"Later, old man," I chuckled, and Victor disconnected the call.

"Leon, there's an update from Earth and the colonies," Beta murmured into my ear.

Rolling over, I squeezed the curvy, short gynoid elf and took her ear into my mouth, earning a moan as I nibbled on it. "Tell me."

"W-well," she gulped, blushing as I trailed my hands over her delicious body. "Nnf~! I'll just, ah~!, send it-"

"Oh no. I'd rather you tell me," I teased her, and the woman whimpered.

"Mf, very well. Meanie ."

I listened with half an ear as I teased Beta while she gave a report on Earth's and the colonies' activities-a full thirty years after the war on Earth kicked off. In the end, without access to nuclear weapons, few people had actually managed to truly genocide anyone else. A few countries had changed regimes or ownership, however.

After the whole 'nuclear launch' thing, there was really no going back. No one was feeling like 'forgive and forget.' Everyone knew where everyone else stood and World War III was official.

America, with an enemy to collectively unify them unlike any seen since World War II, had finally gotten their shit together, politically speaking. Looking to capitalize on the averted tragedy and with no one wanting to be the one on record as voting against it, votes had been unanimous across party lines to retaliate for the attempted genocide of the American people.

Of course, it was too little, too late, for some people and the new unification saw all of the old party members being voted out of office over the next decade and replaced with a new, American National Party and then new laws being put into place to set up new term limits and age limits for all offices of government-with a universal term limit of eight years and age limit of not less than 30 and not more than 60 years of age for anyone elected to a federal office. There were a bunch of other laws thrown in there about integrity in office and punishments for failure to uphold their constituents' best interests, and not ever electing anyone with obvious conflicts of interest/loyalty to other countries. It seemed that after decades of being jerked around, the American people wanted accountability for their elected officials, and for the laws in that regard to have teeth.

But before that eventual outcome, America did manage to agree on one thing: that everyone who had fired nukes at them couldn't be allowed to continue to exist in their current form, if at all. Once more, the sleeping giant had been awoken, and its wrath would not be easily satisfied.

After pulling the trigger on the Samson Option, Israel had been on everyone's shit list, but especially America's, for what was perceived not just as a political betrayal but a spiritual one among the Christian faithful. That didn't just apply to America, of course-the UK, Australia, Canada, and most of Europe felt the same. Their own former allies had temporarily aligned with old enemies and bombed Israel back to the stone age, leaving no structure standing. Citizens had been evacuated, but as far as anyone could tell, all of their politicians and government officials and their families had been made examples of. It was Emperor Hadrian and Syria Palestina all over again. Israel ceased to exist as a nation, with territorial borders being reset to their pre-1900s state.

Not that it mattered much, because shortly after that, no one in the area was really left to claim it who wasn't an American ally-between killing themselves off or being killed by their neighbors. In the end, it was quietly agreed that it was better to raze the Christian holy land to the ground than allow anyone else to claim it ever again. A massive wall was erected around Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem and the area cordoned off-off limits to everyone, save for religious business. The rest of the country was declared a no-man's land and no one was allowed to settle there.

Following that, Egypt, India, the EU (and America), and Russia had divided up the Middle East after those nations turned on each other, fighting over the holy land because they refused to agree to leave it empty. Greece invaded Turkey and it became Byzantion again, with Istanbul renamed once more to Constantinople, in an example of history repeating itself in cycles as the city changed hands again.

At the same time, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan (now officially recognized as its own nation) allied and conquered North Korea, resulting in a United Korean Republic, and then the three nations went on to claim most of China for themselves only to come up against Russia trying to do the same from the other side. Russia was stuck fighting a war on multiple fronts for a while, against the Japan/Korea/Taiwan alliance in the east and the Europeans in the west, until America, Canada, Australia, and other American/European allies got involved. Russia experienced a rather violent regime change after that, and an induction at gunpoint into the newly formed Global Alliance-which replaced the European Union and was basically just a sock puppet for America, given who had the biggest remaining standing armed force.

While that was all going on, the other players on the smaller stage were making their own fun.

With food, water, clean space-age cities, and a technological uplift Africa should have been a veritable paradise. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Local warlords did as warlords do and began raping, pillaging, and stealing. First came the theft of focuses, and killing anyone who refused-because they didn't want anyone to be able to get resources outside their control. Then came multiple genocides and/or enslavement of entire tribes over various, completely identical uplifted villages. Places where white farmers had previously been at risk of being killed had completely evacuated and moved elsewhere-collectively agreeing to move on and settle new worlds, literally more willing to risk aliens than staying. In other words, it was business as usual.

South of the United States border, things had not gone so well for anyone previously involved in the drug trade. One of the little side benefits of medical nanites I hadn't disclosed was that they blocked the effects of all known recreational drugs and completely removed them from the body. Alcohol would still get someone drunk for a short time, but marijuana? Cocaine? Opium? Various prescription drugs? No effect whatsoever. With the value of and need for money completely removed and illegal drugs rendered entirely worthless, it hadn't taken long for people to figure out that the cartels had no ability to influence their governments anymore.

Multiple governments were overthrown over the following years, with people rising up in revolt-many of whom were armed forces for those countries, finally seeing an opportunity to free their countries from the cartels and their corrupt politicians. It was a bloodbath, as everyone associated with the cartels were lined up against walls and shot, then buried in mass graves. With the cartels gone, things devolved into violent civil war for a while as various countries tried to conquer each other, once they actually managed to get working governments.

In the end, shortly after handling the Russian conflict, the Global Alliance moved on to solving other problems. Africa was surprisingly easy to solve, because the problems there weren't particularly well-armed or organized. All they needed to do was sweep in city by city, eliminate a few warlords, free some slaves, and declare that those countries were now part of the Global Alliance and then start enforcing a globalized set of laws-which were basically America's laws, because they didn't want to have to deal with multiple sets of conflicting laws depending on which piece of land one was standing on.

The East Asian Alliance, evolved from the Japan/Korea/Taiwan alliance to include Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and India eagerly joined the Global Alliance during the African Pacification. Then, they set their sights on the US's southern neighbors. Being the last holdouts from the alliance, and with basically the entire rest of the planet getting ready to send troops, those places had all willingly joined and the Global Alliance was rechristened as the Earth Alliance.

And now, according to Beta-in between squeaks and moans as I made love to her while making her report to me, to torment the poor elf shipgirl-the Earth Alliance was putting out feelers to Luna, Mars, and the colonies outside of Sol-including the new worlds I'd terraformed and added to the gate network. The ones publicly listed, anyway. They wanted to form an alliance of all human worlds. A Systems Alliance.

Victor, who had been elected president of Eden Prime, was tentatively behind the idea, but only on the condition that each world within the alliance retain its sovereignty. He didn't want a repeat of the EU, where every nation who joined had to make themselves subservient to a governing body who seemingly weren't accountable to their own people. Instead, he was pushing for mutual defense and trade pacts, with a small 'system' government composed of people elected from each planet. Positions which couldn't make policy that affected how those planets conducted business between themselves, or on their own soil, but which could set policy and handle interstellar trade between humanity and the rest of the universe, once that was established.

His proposal was, of course, being laughed at by those who wanted big, centralized government and more power-as those things tended to go. But it looked like enough people liked the idea that it had some momentum. At least, more than the alternatives.

None of that mattered to me and I should have been far removed from it, except… the Earth Alliance and a few other interested parties wanted me to turn over control of the shipgirl fleets to their authority. To Earth. Oh, they didn't just come out and say it like that, of course. They wanted assurances that if a Systems Alliance was formed, as a citizen of said alliance, I would turn over critical, dangerous military hardware that shouldn't be in the hands of any one citizen to the legal governing body of human space.

"They want what."

Beta froze below me, looking up at me with trepidation. "They want you to turn us over to them. All of us, master."

Growling, I grabbed the thicc elf's wide hips and forcibly rolled her over onto her stomach, before lifting her round ass up into the air. "Ah?! M-master?! Eep!"

Beta squealed as I grabbed a handful of her hair and fucked her furiously into the bed, the wet clapping of our bodies coming together filling the room as her ass bounced in my lap. Her big titties swayed below her as I hammered her tight, wet cunt hard enough to make her drool on the bed from both sets of lips. Leaning over her, I pressed her flat into the bed as she began to clench and flutter around me, her body squeezing my cock as her mouth fell open and her tongue lolled out, moans leaving her plump lips with my every thrust.

Finding her ear, I bit it hard enough that it would have drawn blood on a human. For one of my girls, that was just foreplay, however. It drove the submissive gynoid wild beneath me as she rolled her hips back into me. Letting go of her ear, I pulled her head back a bit further. "You belong to me, Beta. All of you. Say it."

"Y-you, nn! You're our master! Our creator! We all belong only to you, master! I belong to you, master! I love you Leon~! Eee~!!!"

I buried myself inside her clenching cunt and filled her up with a grunt, slapping her ass and drawing a yelp from her. "Get pregnant."

Her body locked up, shivering around me. Slowly, her head turned to me, blue eyes wide as she stared into my own. "Is that an order? Please give me that order! I don't care if Alpha gets mad that I jumped the line ahead of her!"

Dangerous, I sighed, shaking my head and pulling out of her, pulling the gynoid into my arms. "Not today. Sorry for getting your hopes up, Beta."

"Nnn!" she whimpered, wrapping her arms and legs around me. Rubbing her face against my chest, she sighed. "It's fine, master. Just… we really want to bear your children. We see all the androids getting to live happy, fun lives giving birth to a new generation of humanity, and we want that for ourselves, but with you. Please don't make us wait too long."

"I won't," I promised, kissing her forehead. "I love you too much to do that to you." Beta squealed quietly at those words and kissed my chest. "I'm ready to compose a reply to whoever it was sent that asinine demand. I'll do the audio if you'll stick it on a video later."

"Mm. Ready."

Clearing my throat, I began. "To whom it may concern. This is your only warning. Those fleets are mine. Every last one of them. If you want to make your own ships, you're welcome to do so-but they won't be my sentient ships. Those ships are there to protect humanity as a whole from external threats and to keep you from blowing yourselves up, not to be used as a stick against each other or the galaxy at large. If you persist in these foolish demands, I'm going to take my tech and go home. All of my tech, down to the very last stitch of clothes my replicators produced for you. Humanity will be reduced from a space-faring race to the stone age in a matter of minutes. Do not test my patience."

Reaching down, I tilted Beta's chin up and kissed her lips, making the girl mewl. "Send it. And then, I'm going to see if I can make you come hard enough to distract the other Betas."

"Oh no," she whispered, even as she blushed and smiled.

Links to my stuff.

Sine's Dumping Ground for Decommissioned Projects.

Fanfic

Original

My subscribestar

. Commissions by Subscribestar or , $10/1k words.

Now with Discord!

Uninspired

Mass Effect, Inspired Inventor

2125

"Leon! It's good to see you again."

"Victor. How's it going?" I asked, briefly glancing at the video feed before turning my attention back to the world around me.

Victor Manswell looked good-a man in his prime. Youth suited the former billionaire, still playboy, turned politician. Apparently, he had gotten tired of being old and transferred into a new body at some point in the last few years since I last spoke with him.

"Try this, sir!" an android vendor called, offering a bowl of some local delicacy.

"Sure," I smiled and gave it a try, before nodding. "It's really great, thanks. Think you could send me the recipe?"

"Of course!"

Epsilon, her light blue hair done up in twin tails, pulled me along, away from the stall. "You don't have to indulge every last one of them, master."

"Maybe, but it's nice to be acknowledged, isn't it, Epsilon?" I asked, reaching down and grabbing her ass.

The elf gynoid blushed and buried her face in my shoulder. "Nngh~! Master! Not in public!"

"I'll bend you over and breed you in the public square in front of this entire planet if I want," I threatened, and the girl trembled against me.

"-and that's why I need your help, Leon," Victor finished, drawing my attention away from the festival going on around me. A festival that took place on every single one of the planets where my androids lived and raised humans, off the mass relay network, every July 20th, by Earth's calendar.

I quickly went over the transcript of what Victor had said while I had been distracted. "So, you're tired of being locked out of the wider galaxy and want to make contact with the Citadel races."

"This is the fifty year anniversary of First Contact, Leon. It's historic. We'd like to open the relays back up, get out there, and introduce ourselves to the rest of the galaxy. We talked it over between each other and the quarians. We put it to a vote and it was unanimous. The rest of the Systems Alliance believes we're ready."

After the last of the quarians had been brought into the fold, or at least the last of those who wanted to return apparently, I'd had the relays leading galactic west, south east, and north from the Attican Traverse shut off, preventing contact with the Batarians to the south, the council races to the west, and the Terminus Systems to the north and claiming much of the southern inner space and eastern part of the galaxy map as human space. That way, we wouldn't get raiders and pirates, or nosy Turians coming along looking to cause trouble for whoever had been opening relays. None of my shipgirls would allow travel for anyone who wasn't me into those sectors and ships the human-quarian alliance built that didn't use a mental model had had their FTL drives and navigational computers modified in such a way that they couldn't leave human space.

Thankfully, mental models and AI were a state secret. Somehow, the collective human governments had taken my advisement on dealing with the quarians and their AI-phobia to heart and had agreed to keep that secret. As far as the quarians were concerned, those big fleets were all staffed by human clones I had made. Which, while not particularly ethical in their eyes, was better than using AI. I didn't correct them on the assumption and those few quarians I was friendly with in the upper echelons of their government were very careful not to ask.

I was sure they had their suspicions, however. But monitoring their internal communications on that topic, the collective decision of their government seemed to be 'wait and see' since if they were dealing with AI, it was far more advanced than the Geth-and more polite. The human-centric loyalty had been noted.

It wasn't even like we were hiding the secret very well, either. There was historical record of Alpha on camera degloving herself, after all. The quarians were aware, at least the ones that mattered. I knew they had seen the archive footage. They also interacted with most of my seven primary mental model girls on a nearly daily basis, in their various roles.

Private communications between the quarians was much more blunt on the matter. Those in charge were afraid. Deathly so. Because they knew that if they tried to convince their people to leave, the majority of them would rebel. Even the AI menace wouldn't be enough to sway them. The benefits outweighed the potential risks. Public sentiment would likely be along the lines of, 'Well, if Leon's AI haven't tried to kill us all yet, they probably won't,' and they knew it.

As for the budding Human/Quarian alliance…

Frankly, I was a bit surprised that this was the first complaint I was hearing about the Systems Alliance (potentially subject to being renamed soon to include the quarians and the possibility for more aliens) being effectively locked in. It was for their own good, but I hadn't really expected them to believe that. I knew how we humans got about being told things like that, so for them to tolerate it for fifty years was a bit mind-boggling.

"Listen, I'm not asking as the president of the Systems Alliance here. I'm coming to you as a friend. A fellow explorer! You've had years to see what's out there and now, we want the chance to do so too."

That was true. I hadn't been idle these last years. I had been kind of mono-focused, however. I'd given Alpha the directive to send more drones out to explore and map the relay network through Citadel space. I, on the other hand, had been working on exploring my tech trees more in depth and experimenting with them. There were a lot of things that I hadn't taken the time to explore as I went straight towards certain goals-namely, AI, ships, defenses, weapons, a form of immortality, and biotics and other improvements. The only things I had bought in the intervening years had been the Star Wars, Star Trek, and Halo trees after finishing out MCU and Stargate.

I had been mostly keeping to myself with my girls in a single system I'd been using as a testbed for prototyping and exploring all of that new tech. I was playing around with time dilation tech from the Stargate tree to advance development of my tech, compressing decades of time to build and test into months. I hadn't actually gone out and made contact with anyone.

The only 'alien' race I'd been in contact with was an artificially engineered one I had created-the Huragoks of Halo fame, to act as a helper/maintenance/engineer. Eta, the girl I had been working most closely with lately and head of my R department, had immediately demanded access to as many of them as she could get her hands on, to go with her cadre of borrowed (read: commandeered) Operators and Scanners, in addition to requesting a new Technician model be designed and built, which I had. They were so deep in playing with my tech after I started tossing them things wholesale that I had to come physically remove Eta to make her spend time doing literally anything else-or at least the version of her actually on the planet and only syncing with her other selves when they paused the time dilation to do so.

"Alright, alright. Fine. How about this? I'll go make first contact, then let you know when it's safe to start opening up the relays and sending people through."

Victor grinned. "Excellent! That's what I hoped you would say. But if you're doing that, then I think you should go with a bit more official weight behind you than a private citizen."

I shifted my attention to the video and frowned. "Victor…"

"On behalf of the Systems Alliance-"

"No…"

"-and humanity-"

" No…"

"-I do hereby grant you the title of Ambassador-"

"Absolutely not!"

"-and Speaker for Humanity to the greater galaxy," he finished with a grin. A moment later, my focus pinged and I frowned as the new title was added to my identification tag. I turned and shot a glare at Epsilon, who shook her head.

"Don't look at me! It was probably Alpha!"

Victor chuckled as he nodded. "I might have been in contact with Alpha before I called you."

"That traitor," I grumbled, making a mental note to punish her thoroughly later. I think it was about time to finally knock up an android… Who am I kidding? She'll love every second of it.

"Fuck. Fine. Give me a few months and I'll see what I can do."

"Thanks, Leon. Knew you'd understand. Oh, and happy birthday."

"Thanks," I nodded, and the call disconnected. "Well, I should-"

" Oh no you don't! I won your birthday fair and square, master! I have you to myself for the whole rest of the day!" Epsilon reminded, squeezing my arm against her (flat) chest insistently.

I glared down at her. "In. Front. Of. Everyone."

"Eep!"

"Itty bitty titties flopping as I fuck you for this whole world to see."

" Nuuu~!!! Master please don't bully me! My ego can't take it!"

"Actually, I'll use my focus to broadcast it to the fleet-"

Epsilon shook her head frantically. "Please don't! Not that! I'll do anything!"

I wouldn't bully you so much if you didn't make it so fun, Epsilon, I mused as I continued to torment the elf gynoid.

We dropped out of relay transit and Delta engaged her FTL, sending the Lone Wolf shooting across the system. From somewhere behind my seat, I heard a series of poots and toots.

Delta's ears twitched and she frowned. "My inertial dampeners are not 'off,' you dumb gasbag! I turned them down because master likes to feel Gs when I do maneuvers!"

"Poo-poot blat!"

"Keep your tentacles off!" the gynoid growled, and I reached out and laid a hand on her head.

" Easy, Delta," I soothed the wolf girl, and her tail slowly began to wag as I stroked her hair and rubbed her ears. "He's just trying to help. Right, Rated?"

Space Rated, the Huragok that Alpha had assigned to be my assistant, tooted as his noodle head bobbed in a nod. The artificial life forms were too useful not to have one on every ship, members in stasis shrunken down and carried with every android squad. Why build a new body if it got damaged when you had something on hand that could repair it? That applied to bots, androids, and myself since I was still mostly squishy biological parts.

The floating critter tooted again and I petted Delta a bit more firmly. "Now, get us in there and I'll scratch your ears and tail the way you like later."

"'kay," Delta nodded, leaning forward where she was perched on the arm of my chair. After a few minutes, the ship dropped out of FTL and we cruised in towards the big asteroid turned space station/mining facility. "A few ships are sniffing at us. Station, too. It's sending a route for docking. Should I follow it?"

"Go ahead," I confirmed, and Delta nodded, shifting a bit where she sat. "Which ships were scanning us?"

Delta pointed and several vessels in orbit around the station were highlighted-many of which were trying very hard not to be seen, given that they were parked on chunks of debris and were running on minimal power, based on her readings. That they had gone to active scanners told me we'd piqued their interest. Footsteps sounded behind me and a moment later, I had a lap full of elf as Epsilon parked herself.

"Salarian Special Tasks Group," she said, and one blinked. "Turian intelligence," another blinked. "Asari, same. Those are the big names. There are a few others. I was right. If you wanted to introduce humanity to the greater galaxy, give the big three time to get more curious, and throw their scent off of where we came from, this is the place to do it. They've been searching for us since the Migrant Fleet disappeared. They've had a profile for the Lone Wolf since our first encounter with the Migrant Fleet. Now that we're here, within their reach, they won't be able to resist taking the bait."

"Fishing for praise?"

"Yes," she nodded. Chuckling, I wrapped my arms around her, before cupping her small breasts through her vacuum suit/uniform. Epsilon squirmed, whimpering as I mauled her tiny tits and teased her nipples. She had a bit of a complex about being flat chested compared to her sisters, since for whatever reason when she had scanned my mind to activate her core, she had come out as a tiny, flat little tsundere. I liked her just the way she was and enjoyed teasing her about it. "Nnf, master~!"

"I will fuck you on this chair and broadcast it for the entire station to see."

" Nuuu~!"

"Master," Delta pouted.

"And when I'm done with her, I'll bend you over and fuck you on top of her, Delta."

"Awesome! I'm in!" she cackled.

Trailing my hand down to Epsilon's crotch, I stroked her sex through her suit and the gynoid shuddered, rolling her hips and grinding her ass against my crotch. Taking her ear into my mouth, I chewed on it the way I knew drove all of the elf gynoids wild.

A few moments later, Delta slowed us down as we entered the station, and then a series of magnetic clamps locked onto the side of the hull. There was a soft thump as the docking collar latched on and sealed to the hatch. Tilting Epsilon's head, I gave her a quick kiss before standing and hauling her to her feet.

"Come on, let's go have a look around."

Epsilon whimpered. "Master, just leaving me like this… cruel~!"

"Yep. If you're a good girl, I'll pick up where we left off," I promised, and she nodded.

"I'll be good! I'll be so good! I'll get everything we want to know from them," the gynoid promised in return as she latched onto my arm and Delta claimed the other one. Rated tooted and waved a tentacle, before heading deeper into the ship as we made our way to the armory.

I grabbed one of the Mark 85 armor packs off the rack and pressed it to my chest, where it merged into the nanomaterials making up my clothes. Then, I deployed the armor but left the helmet off for now. Digging into the settings from my focus, I adjusted the color scheme to black with red highlights so it wouldn't stand out as much as the original, highly visible paint job. Finally, I grabbed one of four small spheres sitting on the rack and tapped the green button on its side. It blinked three times before lighting up solidly for a full two seconds, then went dim again. I handed the sphere to Delta, who immediately pulled open her vacuum suit and stuck it between her tits, before closing the suit back up, as Epsilon's hand drifted to her own modest chest and she pouted.

The two gynoids grabbed a collapsible helmet/rebreather along with a sidearm each and attached them to their belts to at least pretend to be normal. Then, we hit the airlock-or at least, a closet-sized section of the ship Delta had converted into one the moment we docked. Since we beamed everywhere, and the ships themselves were made of nanomaterials which themselves were composed of various alloys beneath the layer of super dense armor, none of my ship designs had a dedicated man hatch. Frigates and above had a dedicated cargo/fighter hatch area, but just like the hatch forming before us now, they were created on an as-needed basis by rearranging nanomaterial. Delta had really just highlighted a hatch-shaped section of her hull with exterior lights and told the station that's where the man hatch was, so that's where they stuck the docking collar.

The hatch slid open and we walked through the docking collar. Delta made a face at the same time as the smell hit me. "Nasty."

"It's vile," Epsilon agreed.

I mentally triggered a few of my cybernetic modifications and turned on my air filter. A moment later, the smell went away and I let out a sigh of relief. "Yeah, and we're not even in the station. Just connected to their air supply. Delta, you're not-"

"No way!" the wolf girl shook her head. "Positive air pressure, master. None of this nastiness is getting in."

"Good girl," I praised her, and her tail swished happily.

Once we were through, my internal sensors registered the stench as we stepped into a wall of heat and humidity. Their side of the dock was poorly lit and filthy, covered in a layer of grime. My focus pinged as Epsilon highlighted the cameras watching us, followed by a message.

Epsilon: Half a dozen interested parties are watching the feed real time and most of them just started broadcasting. They think we look like asari with hair. I'm tracing their connections back and following them out now.

Once we were clear of the docking area, I read over the signs-translated by my focus-and took us to the market, both to look around and to be seen. As we went, other aliens turned to watch us, and conversations followed. We shopped around a bit, talking with the shop owners and answering a few questions about our species and where we were from but giving only the most general of answers, giving word time to get around. Eventually, I decided that was good enough and led the girls up to the biggest watering hole on Omega-Afterlife.

Delta's ears twitched and flattened against her skull as we entered, the gynoid looking annoyed for a moment, before she apparently adjusted her audio input. "Loud."

"It's a club," I pointed out. "They're supposed to be loud."

"Don't like it."

"Same," Epsilon agreed. "The person who owns this station is here. An asari named Aria T'Loak. Crime lord, pimp, information broker."

"Neat. I've been wanting to meet an asari-"

Both gynoids perked up at that, sharing a look and a digital conversation between them that I chose to ignore-the protocol encrypted from others, but as open to me as if they had spoken verbally. Eventually, Delta said, "Master shouldn't play with xenos. We're more than enough!"

"You should at least let us vet any you choose to first," Epsilon allowed, before frowning and adding, "this one doesn't pass muster."

"What makes you two think I planned to sleep with her?"

Delta snorted quietly. "I can smell it. Master got aroused at the thought of asari."

"Elevated heart rate, increased levels of-"

"Okay, okay, I get it," I rolled my eyes. "I promise not to Kirk it up today."

"'Today,'" Epsilon repeated suspiciously as we entered the club proper and looked around, before finding a private booth empty on the second floor and making our way up. The seating was U-shaped and I wound up pressed between the two gynoids.

We were only seated a few moments before a dark blue, scantily clad asari woman made her way over with a curious smile. "What will you have?"

"Not really sure what's available. Something that tastes good and won't break the bank would be good. What would you suggest?"

"Mm, do you prefer bitter, tangy, or sweet?"

I grinned, eyeing her up. "Sweet, definitely."

"Rr," Epsilon made a quiet noise of displeasure and I rested my hand on her thigh.

"How about something different for all of us and we'll share and decide what we like best?"

The asari woman nodded. "I have just the thing! I'll be right back."

She scurried away and I squeezed Epsilon's thigh. "How's it going?"

"Good. Shouldn't take much longer to do what I need to," the gynoid answered, leaning against my side as Delta pressed herself into the other.

"Master," Delta tried for my attention, and my focus pinged with a video feed. Raising an eyebrow, I opened it as the wolf girl explained, "Uninvited guests nosing around."

Outside the Lone Wolf, a bunch of different people were swarming over it. I spotted salarians, turians, and even a few asari as they swept the ship with handheld scanners. A group of three salarians had entered the docking collar and attempted to use their omni-tools to hack the hatch controls. When that didn't work, they pulled out a machine and magnetically attached it to the ship.

"Should I…?" Delta mimed a pistol and made a quiet, "Pew."

"Nah. I want to see what they do," I shook my head. "See how far they're willing to take it."

The waitress returned with our drinks shortly after that and placed them on the table. "On the house, courtesy of Aria," she explained, before turning and leaving, but not going so far that she couldn't be at our table in a few seconds if we needed anything.

I reached for a glass, only for Epsilon to pick it up and sip. I knew she wasn't just sampling them to see how they tasted. The girls were very protective of me, regardless of the fact that I not only had a backup body on the Lone Wolf, but on every ship in our immense fleet, and more than one secreted away on every planet we'd terraformed. Being fully made of nanomaterials, they were entirely immune to things that might actually kill me, even with my medical nanites and other enhancements.

"Trash," followed by the next one, "not bad," and the last, "you'll like this one."

Taking the offered drink I took a sip for myself and nodded. "You're right. It's good."

Opening up my focus interface, I tapped into the local extranet connection and began searching. Eventually, I found what I was looking for-the contact information for a certain young asari woman and daughter to a somewhat important matriarch. Putting together a few photos, I composed a quick message and sent it off. It would take a while to reach her, given the lag involved in extranet email even if they did somehow use the relays to send data in bursts at FTL speeds.

It would probably be faster to just go to her, but no. I want to make her curious. Make her come to me.

Watching the feed from the Lone Wolf, the group of three at the 'hatch' had broken out a plasma cutter and started trying to burn their way in, to no avail. They put it away and one of them ran his hand over the hull, remarking how it was cool to the touch. A transmission apparently came through as they quickly evacuated the area. A moment later, the docking collar pulled away and the magnetic clamps released, as a larger ship pulled in behind the Lone Wolf and sent out its own magnetic clamps on cables.

"Should I…?"

I shook my head. "See where they try to take it."

Delta nodded and we watched as they eased her ship body out of its berth, moving it into the asteroid belt around Omega. Eventually, Epsilon sent a message.

Epsilon: It's the STG. They hired the local mercenaries-Blood Pack and Eclipse. The first are almost all krogan and vorcha, the second asari and salarians with some turians mixed in.

The blue haired elf frowned, turning worried purple eyes on me.

Epsilon: They weren't just hired to retrieve the ship. They want to try to take us as soon as we leave the club.

Delta perked up, grinning wide at that as her tail began to swish back and forth.

Delta: A fight sounds fun! Can we?

Before I could answer one way or another, a four-eyed batarian wearing armor and carrying a rifle stepped up to the table. "Aria will see you."

"Who?" I asked, since I shouldn't actually know.

He frowned, before seemingly realizing that himself. "She runs Omega. Go downstairs, then to the raised section behind the bar," he pointed, before stepping back, but not leaving-the message that this wasn't optional clear.

Turning to my companions, I found Delta looked ready to launch herself at him and claw his throat out, while Epsilon looked annoyed and a bit disgusted. I remembered that I'd put certain quirks about aliens in their programming and one of those was 'more than two eyes.' I considered removing it, but decided against-batarians weren't to be trusted.

Eventually, I'd ban them from human space entirely, but I wanted an excuse first. Something every human could get behind-not just 'Leon is suspicious of them and thinks we shouldn't trust them.' Likewise, the Salarians were going to get themselves a ban from most of human space, as soon as I found hard evidence on the genophage. That was on my list of things to do, to make sure the little shits didn't get any ideas about trying to fuck with humanity. Medical nanites were now spread across the entirety of the human population and all of the quarians that lived on human worlds, but I didn't want to give them any chances. The Turians might just get the ban hammer as well, for their own part pulling the trigger on the genophage, but I'd wait and see.

"I'm going to go see what Aria wants. You two good here?"

"We should go," Delta began, only for Epsilon to shake her head.

"It's fine."

Delta pouted and I gave her ears a scratch, before moving closer and forcing her to scoot over to let me out. The batarian headed downstairs and I followed, making my way up to where a purple asari sat on a couch, her arms spread along the back and her legs crossed. Pulling one of her arms down, she patted the seat beside her.

"Sit." I raised an eyebrow and met her eyes. After a moment, she added, "Please."

"Thanks." Sitting beside her, I offered a hand. "Leon."

She hummed, before accepting. "Aria." Turning my armored hand over as she studied it, her eyes turned to my face. "Incredible. You really do look like a male asari. With a few superficial differences, of course. What species are you?"

"Human. From a little blue garden world called Earth." I grinned as she let go of my hand. "And yeah, I noticed the similarities myself. Kind of interested in finding out what else we have in common and how compatible things are…"

"Hm," the woman's lips pulled into a small smirk. "As pleasurable as it would be to spend some time exploring a new race, business before pleasure."

"What business, then?"

The smirk fell off the asari's face and she crossed her arms over her breasts. "You need to leave Omega as soon as possible. I can arrange transportation and security. I doubt you have much in the way of credits, given I've never heard of your species before, so I'll do it in exchange for information."

"What information? And what's wrong with the ship we rode in on?" I asked, even as I checked the status on the Lone Wolf, where it was currently being pulled into the belly of a larger ship. Sensors showed that the small STG ship Epsilon had pointed out had also docked with the larger craft, which was firing up its engines and turning ponderously for the mass relay.

"I want to know where Earth is. Where someone would go, if they wanted to trade with the humans. As for your ship," she shook her head. "I'm afraid it's been stolen. Before you came up here, I was informed that someone hired both of the local merc groups to steal your ship and snatch you and your two companions-but especially you. Apparently, there's a market for 'male asari.'"

"Huh. What am I worth on this market?"

Chuckling, Aria brought up her omni-tool. "Right now? About ten million credits, for being the only 'male asari' seen." Her eyes swept me up and down before she leered. "I could probably get double that if I took you back to Thessia myself. Luckily for you, I don't deal in slavery."

"Good to know. And who do you think stole my ship?"

The asari shrugged. "Couldn't say. There are a dozen or more groups that keep a quiet presence on Omega to keep tabs on each other and the Terminus Systems in general. Governments, corporations, mercs, private interests. Whoever it was, they hired the local mercs to do their dirty work for them."

"I see. So, quick question before I go," I began, and her brow quirked in curiosity. "What do you think would happen if I just took my ship, if I still had it, and rolled up to the Citadel?"

"The turian patrol fleet they keep in system would stop you. Quarantine you. Make demands about disabling your weapons and send someone aboard to verify it, and likely try to find a way to infiltrate your systems. Then run you through countless hours of medical scans before you'd be allowed on the station. Good luck." Eyeing me seriously, she asked, "You didn't trip our scanners when you entered, but I should probably ask. You're not carrying any kind of plague or something, are you?"

"No, we're clean," I shook my head. Leaning a bit closer, I lowered my voice. "I'll give you this one for free, if you keep it to yourself." I paused and she nodded slowly. "The quarians were actually our first contact."

"What? But no one has seen most of them in…" she paused and I nodded. "They're in your space."

"We offered them a home," I confirmed.

Aria snorted quietly. "The council aren't going to like that." She smirked, adding, "Good. Fuck those stuck up, self-righteous assholes. Now, are you going to take my offer to get you off the station, or not?"

"No need," I shook my head. "I'll come visit next time I'm in the neighborhood."

With that, I sent a request to Delta, and the three of us disappeared in flashes of light and sound, only to reappear on the Lone Wolf's bridge. Dropping into my seat as Epsilon fell into my lap, I asked, "What are they doing now?"

"Still trying to cut into the hull. They've tried a few different things. Lasers, circular saws, some kind of mass effect field generator," Delta rolled her eyes. "They haven't even managed to scratch my hull armor."

"We're about half an hour from the mass relay. I've informed Alpha and she's got the First Fleet on standby. Once we know where we're going, she'll jump ahead of us and move into position." Epsilon grinned. "I hope it's their home world. I don't think a group that are supposed to be spies would be that stupid, but… if they've got some higher ups breathing down their necks, those politicians might be."

"Never underestimate the incompetence of government," I shook my head. Grabbing Epsilon's hips, I lifted her up, to a squeak from the elf. "Delta, let's go to bed."

"Yes!"

"P-put me down! I can walk!"

"But then you might try to get away, and I can't have that," I leered as I leaned in and molested the elf gynoid's neck.

It was several days of travel by relay before passive scanners detected the ship carrying us entering a larger facility. Not long after that, the larger ship opened up and disgorged its contents.

I managed to convince Epsilon and Delta to leave the bed and we made our way to the bridge, where Rated was running his tentacles over the chair I usually sat in. Raising an eyebrow, I asked, "What're you doing, bud?"

"Poo-poot."

"Cleaning?"

"Poot-blat!"

"Oh, I shed." I sent a look to Delta, who chuckled and looked away.

"Well, I wasn't going to say anything," she murmured. "Master can leave a mess in me any time he wants…"

Epsilon sighed and pushed me into my seat, before taking her customary position. "Don't be gross. And master, it's a thing all humans do, but it's not something we or the androids do. So any time you're on one of our ships, you leave a little bit of yourself behind." A malicious smirk pulled her lips up and she hummed thoughtfully. Looking to Delta, she asked, "Should we tell him Alpha's dirty little secret?

"Blackmail," the wolf girl shook her head.

"Do I want to know?"

"Probably not," Epsilon chuckled. "But that's what makes it such juicy blackmail material over miss perfect. Anyway! Look at where we've ended up. Looks like a space station."

"The big ship is leaving," Delta pointed out, and we watched as it slowly reversed and pulled out of the big docking bay it had been in, before the structure closed up behind it. "What should I do now, master? Can I please blast my way out?"

"Not yet," I shook my head. "Where's Alpha?"

"Hang on," Epsilon murmured, and a moment later, a screen popped up showing the interior of the Avalon.

Alpha sat in her chair, surrounded by the other mental model girls working below her. Looking up, she smiled and crossed her legs. "Master, I'm happy to see you're safe. You've been brought to a dead system the salarians apparently use as a black site. The First Fleet is sitting in the shadow of the local star and can be there in seconds. What are you orders?"

I considered it for a moment before grinning. "Let's make them sweat a bit. Here's what I'm thinking…"

Links to my stuff.

Sine's Dumping Ground for Decommissioned Projects.

Fanfic

Original

My subscribestar

. Commissions by Subscribestar or , $10/1k words.

Now with Discord!

Uninspired

Mass Effect, Inspired Inventor

Commissioned by Rival.

Watching the screen, I smirked when Delta detected a hyperspace window opening outside the station. A moment later, a transmission began broadcasting on all channels and the wolf girl put it up on screen. Sitting in her own command chair, the light blonde, blue eyed catgirl gynoid that was Zeta frowned at the screen for several seconds, as we began picking up increased transmissions within and leaving the station and signs of the place powering up.

Finally, resting her chin in her palm, leaning on her elbow and putting out all the casual annoyance of a cat, Zeta spoke. "I know you can hear me. I know you can understand me. You have something of ours-people important to us, on that ship. Release it now and we can forgive your curiosity, forget this ever happened. It will go down in the history books as a miscommunication. At most, the actions of an over eager operative. Refuse and this will escalate beyond your ability to contain. You have one minute to acknowledge."

With that, she went silent, simply staring into the screen as her tail swished in a way that betrayed just how irritated she truly was for those of us who knew her-or knew cat body language. Sixty seconds later, as apparently she was counting by Earth seconds, her eyes shifted off the screen. "Deploy fighters. Pry that hangar open."

A moment after that, a connection request came from the space station, and Zeta accepted, patching us in so we could see and hear. On the station side of the comms window, a salarian stood, looking nervous as others moved around in the background. "Unidentified vessel, I am Ishoth and this is an unarmed salarian mining colony. We have no idea what ship you speak of."

Zeta shook her head. "Zeta. First Fleet frigate, Stalker. And that was the wrong answer, Ishoth. I don't play games and I won't entertain liars. You are an STG black site and you are all salarian STG agents. I see you powering weapons and shields. My scanners detect the Lone Wolf in your hold, which your hired Blood Pack mercenaries stole from its berth in Omega, and I have been tracking the whole way here. Your window to resolve this peacefully is closing swiftly."

Ishoth fell silent for a moment, blinking as he apparently considered that. Then, he smiled. "I'm sure there's some misunderstanding. I don't recognize your species, captain Zeta. If a previously undiscovered race has lost one of their vessels, then I would be happy to have a ship escort you to the Citadel and explain the situation. The Citadel council and salarian government would surely be happy to help you search for it-"

I cut in, deciding to put an end to this. The salarian shifted his gaze to my window as I transmitted the view from the inside of the Lone Wolf. Behind him someone called out, "Sir, that's coming from inside the station!"

"Alright, that's about enough of that. Let's cut the bullshit, huh?" Reaching out, I laid a hand on Delta's head, scratching her ears. "Delta," she perked up, tail swishing once, "power weapons. If those doors don't open in ten seconds, put a laser through this facility and into their command center. Center it on Ishoth there."

"Powering up~!" the wolf girl leered.

I began counting. "Ten. Nine."

In my lap, Epsilon smirked. "I'd do what he says."

"Eight. Seven."

"Sir, we're detecting a massive energy buildup!"

"Six. Five."

Ishoth held my gaze for another three seconds before sighing. "Open it."

The hangar doors behind us began opening and I stopped counting. As soon as they were wide enough, Delta backed us out. "Good. It seems you can be reasoned with, at gunpoint." The salarian frowned at that. I muted our broadcast to the station. "Zeta, you've got enough room in your hangar for them?"

"Mm. I do," she confirmed.

"Alright. Beam them onboard. Delta, grab Ishoth bring him here. We're going on a field trip to Sur'Kesh."

Zeta nodded and cut comms, prompting Delta to do the same. A moment later, the musical note of teleportation signaled Ishoth's arrival on the ship. The salarian blinked dumbly. "What? I…" He looked around, taking everything in, before his green tinted skin paled. " Oh."

"Yeah. 'Oh,'" I repeated, lifting Epsilon from my lap and standing. The alien looked up as I offered him a hand. "I'm Leon. I'd say it's nice to meet you, but it's really not."

"Ah," he hesitated, then took the offered hand. "I… apologize for that."

"There are worse ways to initiate first contact. You could have shot first," I shrugged. "Come on, how about I give you the tour? Delta, coordinate with Zeta and get us to Sur'Kesh, would you? Put a hurry on it."

"On it, master~!"

The salarian reached for his omni-tool, before pausing. I cast a knowing glance his way and smiled. "Go ahead. Feel free. Scan all you like."

"You're being surprisingly accommodating for someone who was relocated against his will," the alien murmured, bringing up his tool and scanning me. A frown pulled his lips downwards as he did it again, before turning and waving it over the interior of the ship, to similar results. Finally, he chuckled. "I see."

"We've had time to learn how to block omni-tool scans, as you can see. You're pulling valid data, for the things we're allowing you to see, and the rest just isn't going to show up."

"Yes, I see," he nodded, following along as I led him through the ship. "Did you take only me, or did you abduct the rest of the crew as well?"

"They're with Zeta on the Stalker. I can arrange for you to talk to them, but you won't be here long."

As we passed Rated, the Salarian stared, holding up his omni-tool to scan the huragok. "What is that? I've never seen anything like it."

"That? That's Space Rated-or just Rated. He's a member of a bio-engineered race created to help with engineering, maintenance, repairs, medical, and other things. Very smart, friendly, and generally docile."

"Generally?"

"Well, if you manage to actually make one mad, they can disassemble parts of you on the molecular level, so I wouldn't recommend it."

"… Ah."

We came to the engine room and Ishoth blinked again. "That eezo core is several times the size a vessel of this size actually requires…"

I chuckled, before shooing him back out of the engine room towards the kitchen area. "Yeah, the quarians said the same thing, the one time one of them got a good look inside one of my ships."

Ishoth hummed at that, before taking the conversational bait and asking the obvious as he took the offered seat and I began pouring drinks. "The Migrant Fleet disappeared half a century ago. Was that your doing?"

"It was. We offered to let them settle with us and gave them a planet." The salarian blinked, silently repeating that as what I thought might be incredulity washed over his face. "We've been rubbing elbows with them ever since. They like being able to finally get out of the suits, you know?"

"'Out of,'" he echoed, sitting forward. "What about the weakened quarian immune system?"

"What about it?" I asked, my lips twitching into an amused smirk. I put a glass in front of him and sat down, taking a sip from my soda. He narrowed his eyes and I continued, "We took care of it. Human medical technology is pretty advanced. Actually, we've heard of another race like the quarians, that are on the outs with your council. The, what were they called again?"

"Krogan," Epsilon supplied as she walked in and leaned against the door frame.

I snapped a finger as though just remembering. "Right, those guys! We've heard they had some birthrate issues and I thought we might have a look and see what's going on there. Maybe it's some kind of problem related to the radiation from nuking their planet, or some kind of disease they picked up somewhere."

Ishoth paled, his eyes going wide. "You can't!"

"Hm? Can't what?"

"The krogan are a scourge upon the galaxy!" Taking a breath, he visibly forced himself to calm down. "You've never seen one. They're huge. Usually about as tall as you, but they outmass you about five times in pure muscle, plus their shell. They were born and bred for war. They adapt to whatever environment you put them in. Before being introduced to the wider galaxy, their planet was in a constant state of war, fighting over resources and space, because they bred quickly, producing clutches of dozens at a time. It used to be a garden world, but as you said, they used nuclear weapons and poisoned it, killing off much of the local plant life. They are violent and thrive on conflict!"

"Neat. Then we'll get along great." The salarian boggled at that. "Human history is filled with conquest, murder, war, and the worst sorts of violence against each other. We are madmen, barely leashed by the desire to be better, but always looking for an excuse to slip the chains of civilization and return to our caveman days of hunting, killing, and conquering everything that so much as moves funny. I imagine we'll get along just fine with them. The thing you need to understand about humans is, we offer one hand in peace, while the other hides a knife. We are absolutely willing to make peace and get along with others, but the moment you make us your enemy, the knives come out."

"Is that a threat?"

Epsilon snorted. "Did it sound like a threat? A threat would be, if you lay your filthy xeno hands on my master again, I'm going to personally strangle you to death and watch as the life leaves your eyes."

"Epsilon, it's okay." I sent the salarian a smile. "What I gave you was a warning that should be taken in the same vein as any other common sense warning. Don't stare into the sun, you'll go blind. Don't put your hand on the stove, you'll get burned. Don't attack humanity, 'war crimes' don't apply to non-humans."

"I see," Ishoth murmured. "You realize this harms your ability to deal with the Citadel Council and Council races in good faith?"

I smiled. "You say, while sitting here. An STG operative who hired mercenaries on Omega to steal this very ship and attempt to kidnap us from the station. It's nice to see hypocrisy isn't just a human trait, right Epsilon?"

"Mm. Sad, but true," the girl sighed.

"The Council was never going to deal with us in good faith. You know it. I know it. Better that we come to them as something approaching equals, instead of trying to beg for their favor. You've seen this ship. You've seen the barest glimpse of what humanity can do. Tell me, Ishoth. Do you think we need the Council?"

The salarian frowned, before tapping away at his omni-tool, reviewing his scans of the ship, myself, the power readings from the ship when Delta began powering up to attack, and playing back his own teleportation. Finally, he slowly shook his head. "I think that you have a powerful starting position to negotiate from," he admitted. Looking up, he asked, "That's why you're speaking with me. Telling me all of this. Letting me scan you and your ship. You know I'm going to pass this all along to my government, and then the Council."

"Of course," Epsilon rolled her eyes. "Why do you think we came to Omega? We were looking for a messenger. Someone dumb enough, or curious enough to try it, to take the bait and then report back. You bit first."

The alien sighed, a quiet laugh escaping his lips as he nodded. "I see."

"Master! We're here!" Delta called, her voice coming from all around us.

I finished my drink and stood. Ishoth picked up his glass and took a sip, before raising an eyebrow. "Huh. Better than I was expecting."

We made our way back to the bridge and I took a seat, Epsilon dropping into her favorite chair-my lap-while Delta perched in her usual spot. Ishoth stared, his mouth falling open, at the wall to wall display Delta had put up showing Sur'Kesh and the surrounding space. "That's… impossible. This has to be some kind of pre-recorded-"

"Delta, take us in. Full stealth. Put us over their largest city."

"Mm!" Delta nodded, leaning forward a bit as we descended into atmosphere.

Ishoth watched as we approached the biggest city on the planet. Tapping away at his omni-tool, his eyes widened as it picked up transmissions and extranet coming from the planet. "It's real! But that's impossible! The speed needed to get here… it's just not possible through the mass relays! Even if transit through a relay was instant, you still need to traverse space to and from the relay-"

"Delta, do you see a roof with somewhere we can stand around?" When the wolf girl nodded, I said, "Beam us down."

There was a flash of light and I found myself standing on a roof, Ishoth a few feet away. He closed his eyes and breathed in, before slumping slightly. "It's real." Turning, he looked a bit pale as several revelations occurred all at once. "You have teleportation technology. FTL that doesn't rely on mass relays. Stealth technology that can beat our best sensors."

"All that and more," I confirmed. "That's just the stuff you've seen with your own eyes. Of course, while you were scanning me, we were scanning you. I've had some of my tech heads going over your biological data. Salarian lifespans are tiny. It wouldn't actually be all that hard to increase them. Then again, we don't exactly have any reason to do so. It's not like we're allies. Oh well," I shrugged.

"Wait! How do we contact you? To open negotiations, cultural exchange, and the like?"

I tapped into my focus interface and sent him the extranet address I'd made to contact the asari I wanted to bait into chasing after me. "That address works."

"What if we wanted to send a delegation?"

"We'll figure that out later. I'm going to need your government to rescind their standing order to try to capture my ships, first. This time, I was polite. I wanted to talk. Give diplomacy a chance, you know? If someone tries it again, we're going to move to gunboat diplomacy."

"That could start a war-"

"A possibility I'm well aware of. It's kind of funny, really. You've seen some of what my tech can do, but you haven't put together the most obvious use of it. What do you think is going to happen, if a war kicks off between our peoples? I don't know about you, but our First Strike doctrine is pretty clear. Take out the enemy command and control centers first, usually with nuclear arms. Off-relay FTL. Stealth. Teleportation. Nukes."

A full body shiver ran up the salarian's body. "Oh. "

"Mhmm. But hey, it's not like we have to worry about that, right? I'm sure your government are all reasonable people who will take the polite warning for what it is, right?" The salarian swallowed. With that, I left him there as I pinged Delta to beam me away, to another site in the city, out of sight of observers, cameras, scanners, and other means of observation.

Switching over to Zeta, I radioed in, "Zeta, send me a pokeball please. Then arrange to have a Delta sent with a full crew for stealth support."

"Roger."

A moment later, I caught a ball as it beamed into the air in front of me. I tapped the green button on the side, waiting for it to go through its initialization process, before hitting it again and tossing the ball onto the roof in front of me. It opened up and a team of four black-clad androids popped out. They began transmitting immediately as they moved, sweeping the roof and surrounding area for threats, before the leader turned and marched up to me, leaving the other three on watch.

The white haired gynoid took a knee in front of me, one hand coming up to her chest as she bowed her head. "Sir!"

Reaching down, I took her hand and gently but firmly pulled her to her feet. "What's your name?"

"101E, sir," she answered quickly.

"One Oh One Echo," I nodded, and she perked up a bit as I took her in. Like all of the female androids, she was sexy and had a cute face, with bright blue eyes and white hair. "Alright, I've got a job for your team. I've already given the order to Zeta, so you'll have a Delta coming to act as support and bring your relief soon, so you can have teams rotate in and out." She nodded at that and I continued. "I need you to do a little nosing around. Find their critical infrastructure, government officials, people of interest-everything we'd need to take out if it came down to it, to cripple them. I want as much dirt on all the big players as possible. Anything we can use against them if we need to. Basically, assume we're planning a soft regime change, with a more violent alternative in case the first attempt doesn't pan out. None of you are deniable assets, so don't get caught, don't leave any evidence behind. Okay?"

"Understood, sir!"

I gave her a smile and a pat on the head, earning a quiet squeak. "Good girl, 101Echo." I turned to address the others as well. "All of you, stay safe. Don't put yourselves in danger if you don't have to."

With that, I pinged Delta and had her beam me up. We left the planet after Zeta beamed the other salarians down onto the same roof with Ishoth.

"Delta, take us to Tuchanka. Let's see if we can make some friends…"

"RAAAAGH!!!"

"RAAAH!!!"

I watched as a krogan charged Delta, only for the wolf-girl to flip over him, grab his shell, pick him up, and throw him several yards-sending the big dinosaur-like alien bouncing across the ground like a stone tossed at a lake, completely out of the fighting pit. Landing lightly on her feet, Delta fell into a crouch, her arms spread and her tail thrashing as she glared at the other krogans gathered to watch.

"Any other takers?" I asked, riling up the crowd. "Come on now, you're not just going to let some tiny alien female embarrass you like this, are you? You losers got no quads?"

That got a response, as half a dozen of them roared, charging down into the pit. Delta laughed, flashing between them as she began throwing punches and kicks, either knocking them out with shots to the jaw, or just kicking them back out of the pit.

Epsilon sighed. " Meatheads. Of course she'd be right at home here."

"Let Delta have her fun," I said, reaching over and cupping her ass, making the elf gynoid blush. "She's never really gotten a chance to just cut loose like this."

"Psh. Fine," Epsilon rolled her eyes. "Anyway master, that guy is here," she said, pointing to a krogan in red painted armor watching from a catwalk above the fighting pit. "You asked for the krogan most likely to actually listen. That's him. Urdnot Wrex. Mercenary, bounty hunter, and something called a krogan Battle Master. Basically, they're sanctioned terrorists, is the best way to put it. No methods too harsh, if it gets them what they want."

"Scary," I murmured, before nodding. "You say he's the guy?"

"Mm. His communications between other krogans show he's been trying for a while to find a way to fix the problems caused by the genophage, their own culture treating krogan lives as expendable, and their violent nature causing a lot of in-fighting when they aren't out working as shock troops, leading to steep population decline. He's one of the few males who see the writing on the wall. Many of the females do as well, but most aren't exactly in a position to do anything about it."

The fight abruptly came to an end when one of the krogan knocked out of the pit pulled a shotgun, took aim, and fired. Everything went still as the hexagonal shields of Delta's wave-force armor flared briefly. The wolf-girl turned and launched herself out of the pit in a perfect ballistic arc. The krogan fired twice more, shots again splashing off her shields, before she got to him. Delta grabbed him with one hand by the ridge at the back of the head and the other on the top of his shell, and proceeded to pull.

It was over before anyone could do anything to stop it. There was a wet ripping sound, then a thump as his body hit the floor. Holding up his head for all to see, she let it go, then kicked it hard enough to hit the ceiling of the bunker we were in, where it splattered in a wet splash of bone, blood, and brains.

Contrary to expectations, my most violent shipgirl didn't look upset at all. No, the ear to ear grin on her face told me this was exactly where she wanted to be.

Before things could devolve further, the red-clad krogan up above whistled sharply. "Humans!" he yelled, drawing our attention, before gesturing for us to follow and walking down the catwalk towards where scans of the building showed a large room.

Delta pushed her way through the crowd and latched onto my side as we made our way up to the stairs, the krogans parting around our group as we went. "Master, did you see me?! I was all, whoosh, pow, bang! And then he went all, splat, thump!"

"Good work, Delta," I squeezed her tight. "I'll reward you tonight."

"Mm!" she nodded happily.

Epsilon pouted, making a disgruntled noise. "I hacked their messages and master didn't reward me-"

"Right here, right now, in front of everyone," I threatened, and Epsilon yelped, even as her nipples stood out beneath her suit.

We found Wrex and closed the door behind us. Epsilon ran a quick scan for bugs and a moment later, we heard a pop in the ceiling, drawing an amused look from the krogan. "What do you want, human?"

"So, did you come straight back here after stealing my ship for the STG?" I asked, grinning. A bit of digging showed that it Wrex's group specifically that the salarians had hired out of Omega, and apparently they had come back after once they got paid. We'd killed a bit of time waiting for his ship to get back to Tuchanka before coming down, ostensibly to let Epsilon dig through their networks and find the krogan most likely to take the offer I was going to make.

The alien snorted a laugh. "Thought that was you. Saw you on the footage from Omega. How'd you get back to the ship?"

"Teleportation tech. As long as we're in range, we can beam anywhere the Lone Wolf's scanners can see. Or any one."

He shifted a bit where he stood. "Oh yeah?"

"Delta," I asked, and she perked up. "Find one of those big arenas outside and put us there."

There was a note of sound and light, and between one blink and the next, we were standing in the middle of one of the outdoor arenas where they held their rites. Wrex looked around for a moment, kneeling to pick up a handful of sand and confirm that it was real. Standing again, he turned back and asked, "What'd you do to the salarians?"

"Told them that if they kept fucking around, they were going to find out. Then I beamed them all onto one of my ships and took them home. Dropped them off on their home planet, just to prove I could get in and out without them knowing until it was too late."

The big alien laughed. "They're probably shitting their pants at that. Paranoid little bastards. Alright, you're not shooting, or 'beaming' me into the sky and dropping me from orbit, so that means you wanna talk. Go on." He turned a grin on Delta and added, "That little show you put on earned that much."

Delta grinned back and I chuckled. Epsilon stepped forward, putting her focus in broadcast mode and creating a hologram Wrex could see. "You seem like the kind of person who prefers to cut to the chase, so I'll keep this brief. The krogan population is in decline. This is intentional, as you know, because of the salarians and the turians, and the genophage-but it wouldn't have happened without approval from the Citadel Council. They grew afraid of your people. Afraid of being swept away under a tide of krogans outbreeding them, living a long time, and being very hard to kill compared to other races. They used you up and threw you away."

"Yep," Wrex grunted. "What about it?"

"We're forming our own alliance. We've already got the quarians on board."

"And what would we be doing for this alliance?"

"In, not 'for,'" I corrected. "You'd work with us, not for us. There's a difference. As for what? Whatever needs doing. Whatever you're good at and want to do, same as the quarians and the other humans. Leave the specifics to the politicians to figure out. We're just here to make the offer."

"Uh huh. What's in it for us?"

"A cure," Epsilon answered with a smirk. "While we were on Sur'Kesh, I might have broken into the salarian databases-the ones they don't want anyone to know about. Did you know, the idea of air gapping their equipment never even occurred to them? I guess they thought all those fancy firewalls, antivirus, and other crap would protect their data. That, or that no one would ever get close enough to just take it. Either way, we have the original genophage data and subsequent update data. Between that and live samples, it should be possible to just destroy it."

Or we could transfer them into new bodies, but that was an offer we could make later. No need to pull out all our cards right at the start.

"What makes you think I'd believe you?" the krogan demanded. "We've been jerked around by the quad over the phage before."

"For some people, words just aren't enough," I nodded. "We're building a station. A neutral meeting place in the Attican Traverse. Sort of our own personal Citadel. I'll send you the location and you can come and have a look for yourself. Bring friends, if you like."

"Hmph. I'll think about it."

"That's all we ask. Later, then-"

"Wait." I paused and the krogan made a quiet rumble, before asking, "If I wanted to get some people off the planet, out from under a bunch of guards, could you?"

I nodded. "Wouldn't be a problem."

He nodded. "I'll go see this place, then. When should I go?"

"It should be done by the time you get there."

With that, I had Delta beam us back to the ship. Sitting down, I sent a message to Alpha and Eta, letting them know we'd need to build a facility toute suite-preferably somewhere off the beaten path, in a dead system known to be uninhabited. I had several drones out that way, moving along the relay network to map everything out, so it was likely that we already had several candidates by now.

Dialing up Victor, I grinned as I sat back and waited for him to pick up. After a moment, the call connected and the man looked blearily at me from the other side of the video call. "Leon. What is it? It's," his eyes shifted to the side, "three in the morning."

"Oh, it's nothing important. Just thought you'd like to know I made contact with several other alien races."

The man sighed, closing his eyes and bringing his hand up to rub his face. "You know I'm not going to be able to get back to sleep after that. Alright, what have you found?"

"I'll have Epsilon send you the files. Short version though, we're looking to make that alliance with the quarians official and expand it to include other species. You've got about a week to put together a diplomatic team. I'm about to call the quarians and tell them the same thing. You'll be taking the First Out from human space. You'll want to put together an escort detail of other ships from the Systems Alliance fleet. Not my ships-the ones you've built yourselves. I might send the First Fleet."

"A week."

I smiled as the man stared at me, bleary-eyed. "Yup. As Speaker for Humanity, I needed to send a message to somebody, which means I have to move fast on our other option, before they try to sabotage things."

Victor twitched. "I'm beginning to think you're more trouble than you're worth."

"Only beginning to? Damn. I'll have to work harder. Either you'll remove my titles, or I'll give you an ulcer from stress. But since I'd be betting against my own tech, I'll have to put my money on you rescinding it first."

The man glared. "I'll have teams put together and the First Out ready in five days. Anything else?"

"Good man," I chuckled. Thinking back to what I knew about the wider galaxy, and the chatter I'd seen about us on Omega, I grinned. "Just one more thing. I need strippers."

Victor looked confused. "Strippers? As in…?"

"As in people who take their clothes off and dance."

"… Why do you need strippers, Leon?"

I sent the man a look that questioned his intelligence. "Well, who else am I going to get to use the stripper poles?"

Victor's mouth opened and closed. After a moment, his gaze shifted to Epsilon in my lap, who had been silent up until now. "What. Could you please translate his insanity?"

"I don't see what's so hard to follow," Epsilon shrugged. "Here, look."

The elf gynoid gestured and a video recorded from Omega played, of several asari dancers doing their thing. Victor's mouth fell open. "Are those… alien pole dancers?"

"Yup. Turns out, shaking your ass is a universally understood language. Those are asari. Pretty much the hottest alien space babes in the galaxy-"

" An entire race of 'alien space babes,'" Epsilon corrected. "All asari are female."

Victor blinked, a distant look crossing his face. "Wait. Didn't you say something like that, years back? When we first launched? That they'd be blue and probably female?"

"I might have," I shrugged. "Doesn't matter. What does matter is the comms chatter Epsilon intercepted. To sum it up, they think we look like asari. Pink asari with hair, but still. And me? Male asari. I'm going to make sure we have a few members of races who will be sure to report back to the Citadel show up as guests. When they send their reports back, I want them to be in awe of our tech. I want them to be afraid of our ships. And I want them to be aroused at the very thought of a human. In this way, when the information leaks to the general populace-which we'll make sure happens-humanity will be the new craze. The wealthy, advanced race that everyone wants to buy from. The powerful race everyone is afraid to attack. The popular race everyone wants around. I want them to come to us, not the other way around. After the meeting, I'm going to open up the relays leading out of human space. The satellites will quarantine the space around our relays, so you don't have to worry about invasion, but you should let the rest of the Systems Alliance to know to start expecting guests."

Victor breathed out a quiet groan, before collapsing backwards in his bed. "I'm getting too old for this shit."

"You wouldn't have it any other way, old man."

The last I saw of him was Victor flipping me the bird as he cut off the transmission.

Links to my stuff.

Sine's Dumping Ground for Decommissioned Projects.

Fanfic

Original

My subscribestar

. Commissions by Subscribestar or , $10/1k words.

Now with Discord!

Uninspired

Mass Effect, Inspired Inventor

Commissioned by Rival.

Recipient: Liara T'Soni

Sender: Leon Reynolds

Subject: An archaeological find you might be interested in.

Message:

[picture]

Let me know if you'd like to see more.

Recipient: Leon Reynolds

Sender: Liara T'Soni

Subject: An archaeological find you might be interested in.

Message:

By the goddess, yes!

Where was this taken?! When?!

It's clearly a Prothean ruin! I have to know!

But, uh, it occurs to me that I should probably ask who you are, and how you got my name and address?

How did you know I was studying this field?

Recipient: Liara T'Soni

Sender: Leon Reynolds

Subject: An archaeological find you might be interested in.

Message:

All in due time.

My name is Leon, and I'm a human.

[picture]

As for how I got your address, I looked it up.

Asari are one of the oldest races alive today and one of the longest lived.

I assumed that if anyone would know about these ruins, it would be an asari.

After that, I did a little digging and found a young, fresh, enthusiastic face studying in the field.

So, how would you like to see them for yourself?

In person.

Recipient: Leon Reynolds

Sender: Liara T'Soni

Subject: An archaeological find you might be interested in.

Message:

…

Why didn't you contact the Citadel?!

I can't be the first contact you have with our race!

And goddess, you look just like us!

I mean, there are obvious differences, but the similarities-!

It's uncanny!

I would love nothing more than to see them for myself, and meet you if possible!

Recipient: Liara T'Soni

Sender: Leon Reynolds

Subject: An archaeological find you might be interested in.

Message:

Haha!

Oh no, you're not my first contact with an asari.

That was with a nice lady I met on Omega.

I noticed the similarities myself.

I'd love to discuss them with you in more detail, later.

And that's good to hear.

I wasn't looking forward to trying to find some other bright young asari prothean expert and having to repeat the whole 'Hi, I'm an alien, want to come to my planet and look at some ruins I found?' conversation.

[Date]

[Coordinates: Relay Route]

If you need a ride, I can pick you up.

Recipient: Leon Reynolds

Sender: Liara T'Soni

Subject: An archaeological find you might be interested in.

Message:

I'm sorry, Leon.

The furthest I can find a reputable ship willing to take me is Omega.

Recipient: Liara T'Soni

Sender: Leon Reynolds

Subject: An archaeological find you might be interested in.

Message:

That's fine.

I'll meet you there.

Liara's heart pounded in her chest as she reread the message chain on her omni-tool.

I can't believe I'm doing this!!! she mentally squealed, scrolling up to the 'human's' picture again and biting her lip, before hurriedly moving on to the picture of the ruins. It seemed like every time she looked at them, she found something new.

"You're going to miss the tryouts if you don't hurry."

Liara looked up, sending the turian who had approached a confused look. "Excuse me?"

"Tryouts. For dancer. At Afterlife," he repeated, as though she were particularly slow.

Liara laughed and shook her head. Her eyes tracked across the area around them and only then did she realize that it seemed that somehow, she was the only one left in the waiting area. It had been busy just a few moments ago, but suddenly, it had cleared out. Putting the thought aside, she said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm not actually here to try out. I'm waiting for a friend."

The turian frowned, his mandibles clicking briefly. Stepping closer, he lowered his voice. " Listen. You should find somewhere else to be in the next two minutes. Aria's bar is about the safest place around."

Now, Liara's heart was pounding in her chest for an entirely different reason. "Why?"

The turian nodded towards the distance, where she had spotted a taxi earlier. Liara turned to look and saw several people in yellow and black armor waiting, getting weapons ready. Her eyes went wide as the turian explained, "Those guys are one of the local merc companies. They've mustered up there. Coincidentally, I'm sure, Aria's new friend is making a visit. You'll want to be somewhere else."

"Uh," Liara quickly got up and moved towards the club. As she went, she sent off another message to Leon.

Liara: I think that some mercenaries are waiting for you!

A moment later, she got a response.

Leon: Thanks for the heads up. Take cover. I'll come get you when it's over.

Liara frowned, not wanting to just leave the human to get jumped by a band of mercenaries and have to fend for himself. But there wasn't much she could do. Sure, she was confident in her strength with her biotics, but she wasn't a trained fighter! She was just an archaeology student! A, well, nerd. Not some gun toting badass asari commando!

I want to watch, she decided, and ducked behind what had once been a planter, but now only held dead soil.

The turian saw her stop and kept moving. "Your funeral," he shrugged, hurrying into the doors ahead of him.

Liara watched as the mercenaries quickly moved up, taking up firing positions to either side of the entrance from the docking bay. A group of three of them stood in front of the entry, visibly waiting with weapons at the ready, but not aimed. The rest, and largest group, remained out of sight of the dock-obviously backup for the others.

Leon strolled out of the docking area with seemingly not a care in the world, wearing a set of black and red armor and flanked on either side by a pair of human? women-one a black haired woman with triangular ears sticking from the top of her head, the other with short silver hair and pointed ears where Leon's were round. The human looked around, taking in the ambush as the three Eclipse mercenaries approached from the front, an asari taking the lead.

"You three are coming with us. We can do this the fun way or the easy way," the asari merc's smirk was audible in her voice as she cocked her hip and rested a hand on it, the other tapping her SMG against her thigh.

"Quick question," Leon asked, looking around at the men. "What happens if you lose? If we fight and, by some miracle, we win? Is anyone going to care that we dropped a bunch of bodies, here on Omega?"

" It's Omega. No one gives a fuck, as long as you're not fucking with Aria."

Leon laughed, breathing a relieved sigh. "Oh, thank goodness. That makes this easier, then. Kill them all."

The mercenaries were quick on the ball and opened fire the moment the word 'kill' left Leon's mouth. It didn't seem to matter, as hexagonal shields sprang up around him and his two companions, soaking up enemy fire. Fire which was abruptly joined by the sounds of some very large weapon firing nearby, drawing Liara's eyes to where the backup group were getting mowed down by a group of women-two wielding burning red energy swords, one perched up on a ledge with a sniper rifle, and the other using a column as cover while she fired into the group with some kind of energy rifle.

"What the fu-"

The blue haired girl darted to Leon's right, swinging one arm in a wide arc. Something extended in front of her hand-one of those hexagonal shields, Liara realized. Shields around the mercenaries taking shots at Leon's group abruptly failed and bodies fell to the ground in splashes of blood.

The black haired girl launched herself into the group on Leon's left, a shield collapsing under the force of her fist, before it continued on and collapsed a batarian's helmet with a sickening crunch. Her foot snapped out, breaking another shield and impacting a turian's crotch, causing it to fall to the ground with a scream. Clawed hands flashed out at a third, punching through shields, chest armor, and going wrist deep into an asari.

Leon pointed his hand at one of the three mercenaries in front of him, the palm of his armor lighting up for just a moment, before a yellow-white blast hit the salarian and sent them spinning away. A second blast from the other hand did likewise to a turian on the other side of the asari in charge.

The asari raised her hands, glowing with biotic power as she reached out to grab Leon, possibly to use a throw to send him flying. Liara raised her arm to try to stop it, only for her jaw to fall open as the human began to glow as well, throwing off the technique before it could do anything.

"So. You want to tell me who hired you?"

The Asari growled wordlessly, winding up for a big biotic slam. Leon shrugged and blasted her off her feet, sending her tumbling back. When she tried to stand, he shot her again, sending her crashing back into the floor as he approached.

"Sure you don't want to tell me?" he asked, kicking her SMG away and reaching down to lay his hand on top of the woman's head.

"Go fuck yourself."

"You don't have to bother, master. I've already cracked her omni-tool. It was the asari councilor for the Citadel," the silver haired girl answered as she approached, wiping a spot of blood away from her cheek. "She wanted us dead or alive. Either way, shipped back to Thessia."

"Thank you, Beta."

The woman below Leon went wide-eyed. "They're going to kill me! My family-!"

"Not my problem," Leon shrugged, letting her go and standing. "I need to go pick up our passenger and talk to Aria. Beta, would you mind handling the cleanup?"

"Not at all!" the silver haired girl, Beta, beamed a happy smile as she moved over beside the fallen mercenary. "Delta, go with master. Eighty-eighth! Begin mop-up operations! Full deployment!"

Distantly, Liara heard confirmations from the four-man group who had taken out the backup. The now named Delta nodded and hurried after Leon, who Liara belatedly realized, was walking right towards her. Behind the man, Beta's smile fell off as she looked down at the asari mercenary in disgust, before raising her booted foot. Liara flinched as the woman brought her boot down, the mercenary screaming only briefly before Beta's foot stomped down straight through her face and head, sending brains, blood, and bits of skull flying. She marched over to do the same to the other two enemies Leon had left alive, before turning and rushing off to join the other four wearing black.

Liara shakily stood, dusting herself off. "Ah, hello!"

Leon sent her a smile, offering his hand. "Liara. Nice to meet you in person. Sorry it couldn't be under better circumstances."

Liara took the offered hand and blinked as Leon pulled her into his side and towards the club. Briefly, she caught sight of numerous human men and women, all identical and armed to the teeth, sprinting ahead of the four-man group, followed by Beta, all heading deeper into Omega.

"So," Leon began, distracting her. "We won't be going straight to the dig site, unfortunately. There's a little social gathering I need to attend first, but it shouldn't take more than a day or three. You're welcome to come along. In fact, I think you'll enjoy it. What do you say?"

Liara chuckled. "That sounds fine. I don't mind at all."

"Excellent," he smiled, and Liara felt her heart thump in her chest.

Oh, is this how everyone else sees asari? I uh, I might be in trouble…

"-not going to be that fun, just a bunch of politicians talking about political crap. Sending out feelers to different races who aren't Citadel races and seeing who wants to join into our own bloc."

"Ah?" Liara blinked, realizing she had zoned out and had been staring, watching his lips move and hearing the sounds he made, but not actually processing the words. Her body felt hot, her sex aching with need. "Sorry, I got distracted."

"It's okay," Leon smiled, and pushed through the doors leading into the club, the noise abruptly drowning out any potential for conversation. He led them up to a raised section, where a woman sat on a couch. She sat staring at a data tablet, showing a camera feed from deeper in the station. On it, those identical men and women sprinted through halls, moving from corridor to corridor in teams, killing anyone that wore the yellow and black Eclipse armor.

"Aria. How've you been?"

The older asari looked up, her eyes briefly going wide as they met Leon's-for just a moment, fear visible. Then, she frowned and it vanished. "Leon. You're making a mess of my station."

"Sorry about that. Civilian casualties?"

Aria glanced back at the tablet. "None, so far. But you knew that already, didn't you."

He simply smiled. "I've come to extend an invitation for a little get-together we're having. We've put together a station and we're inviting everyone who can reasonably make it and isn't already under the aegis of the Citadel-or those individuals who've stepped out from under their umbrella and hold territory within the Attican Traverse and Terminus Systems, such as yourself. The main event is happening soon, but we're going to leave the place open for business indefinitely, kind of like our own Citadel. A place where humans and other species can work out their differences peacefully. Port of call to diplomats, entrepreneurs, wanderers. A little piece of civilization, all alone in the night."

The elder asari considered it for a few moments before shaking her head. "If I leave now, someone will try to take over. Someone just created a void in Omega, where the Eclipse used to be. I need to see to that-"

"Come with me and I'll make sure Omega is still here when you get back, and no one sits in your chair while you're gone."

Frowning, Aria asked, "Why do you want me there so badly?"

"Because you have a reputation. If you go, if anyone asks, you're the closest thing to a neutral third party who can vouch for its authenticity. An ambassador to the Terminus Systems, in a way."

She spent a few moments staring at Leon as she considered. Her eyes trailed down to the tablet for a moment, checking the progress of Leon's troops. Finally, she nodded. "How long will we be gone?"

"About three days."

"I'll go pack. Wait for me at the dock."

With that, the woman stood and left. Leon pulled at Liara's elbow and led her from the club, back out into the relatively quieter station. They made their way past the bodies and into the docking area proper, Liara looking away from the sight of the pulped asari head.

"So," Leon began as they found a couple of seats and sat down to wait. Holding out his hand, something flashed there momentarily and he offered her a little metal triangle, identical to the one at his temple. "This is a focus. It's your identification, key to be allowed onto the ship and other places in human space, and proof that you're approved to be somewhere if you aren't with me. It'll also let you access our own network, separate from the extranet."

"Oh! Thank you," Liara smiled, accepting the device and asking, "How do I…?"

"Just press it to your temple and it'll bond to your skin at the molecular level. To remove it, you have to go into the settings and manually tell it to disengage," he explained, and Liara pressed the device against her skin. A moment later, the world was overlaid with menus, tags, and other things and she blinked, taking it all in.

Turning to look at Leon, she blinked as a name tag propagated above his head, followed by other lines.

Leon Reynolds

Ambassador, Systems Alliance

Speaker for Humanity

A glance at Delta returned,

Delta

Lone Wolf

Her attention was drawn to a sudden projection popping up in the middle of her vision. "This," Leon began, "is what we found on Mars-one of the planets in our home system."

Liara's mouth fell open as video played of a much younger Leon and another woman with pointed ears (also young) walking around inside what was clearly a prothean facility. She watched as they explored ships, then the rest of the facility. When it finished, Leon played another video, this one of ruins out in the open on a lush, green planet.

"And this is on one of our colony planets," he explained.

"It's all real," she murmured. "They're definitely prothean in origin. The ships were actually working?"

"They were. Mostly. It seems like they did a bit of sabotage and deleted the VIs that had been running them and the facility. Probably to keep anyone from getting at whatever secrets they held. It's where we got our map of the relay network. Otherwise, yeah, everything else was pretty intact, for being about fifty thousand years out of date."

"Ah, I can't wait!"

Leon chuckled, before looking up as the sound of heels clacking against the ground greeted them. They looked up to see Aria approaching and Leon stood. Aria raised an eyebrow. "What about your friend?"

Holding up a hand, he looked aside and said, "Beta, we're leaving. How's your progress?"

Immediately, there was a note of sound and a flash of light, as Beta reappeared. "Almost finished, master. The 88th have things in hand from here. I've already given them their assignment to maintain station stability and deal with anyone attempting to claim Aria's position while she's with us."

"Thanks, Beta," he nodded. "Alright, let's go."

Humming quietly, Aria asked, "You walked into that, didn't you?"

Leon turned and sent her a grin as they made their way into the docking collar and the door on the end opened for them. "Why Aria, I have no idea what you're talking about. What possible benefit could there be to tipping my hand and showing some of what my troops are capable of?"

The asari make a skeptical noise. "Oh, I think we both know the value of a demonstration."

Beta stopped at the door and gestured them inside, and Liara flinched away from the woman as she hurried past. Raising an eyebrow, Beta followed her in as the door closed behind them. "Is something the matter?"

"It's nothing," Liara answered quickly.

Aria snorted. "I saw the feed. You put your boot through an asari's head like you were crushing a particularly disgusting bug."

"Mm. That's unfair. Do you know why I did it?"

"They were out of the fight and you executed them," Liara said, as they entered what appeared to be the bridge level and Leon took a seat, as a couch rose from the floor off to the side of it, which Aria dropped onto and slipped her bag underneath. "What possible justification could you have for executing prisoners?"

Delta leaned forward, looking around Leon as her purple eyes met Liara's blue. "They attacked master."

"That doesn't mean you should kill them."

Beta sighed, shaking her head. "It does, actually. We have to set a very visible precedent that attacks on Leon will not be tolerated and there will be no survivors from any such attempts. He's too valuable, both to us personally and to humanity as a whole, for attacks on his person to go without immediate and violent reprisal."

"Anyone who attacks master dies. No exceptions," Delta nodded, before turning forward as screens came to life around them showing the exterior of Omega as they pulled away quickly.

"Right. Aria, here," Leon tossed her a focus. "Press it against your temple. You can only take it off using the menu built in. That's your identification for this. Anyone not wearing one of these is going to get a 'warm' welcome, so keep it on."

"I see," she murmured, pressing it to her head. Taking in the simple map of the local system floating off to the side of the display, she said, "You're not heading for the relay."

"Noticed that, did you?" Leon grinned. "Delta, take us out."

"Mm!" the woman perched on the arm of Leon's chair nodded. A blue-white distortion in space flared to life in front of the ship and they rushed into it. "ETA is just under half an hour."

"Come on, I'll show you around. You've got time for a shower if you want to clean up," Leon said, pushing himself out of his seat and gesturing for them to follow.

Half an hour? Even at FTL speed, we can't be going that far out of the Omega system. That can't be right, Liara mused.

A short tour, quick shower, and a snack later she was proven wrong as they dropped out of FTL and they took in their destination. "No way."

"Five minutes to relay exit, captain."

"Thank you, helmsman," Rix acknowledged, mentally preparing himself for what they were likely to find on the other end.

He was high enough in the chain of command to know where their orders came from, but scuttlebutt was pretty close to accurate this time. About fifty years ago, before his time in the service, the Migrant Fleet had up and disappeared-which was a feat in and of itself, considering just how many interested parties were keeping an eye on them, and how many of those within the fleet had loose lips, or were just flat out paid by interested parties to send back reports on the goings on in the fleet.

That was public knowledge. Everyone was aware of it, even if it hadn't exactly been broadcast in the news. When the quarians on pilgrimage abruptly left mid-pilgrimage when ships came to track them down and pick them up, people had wondered. All but a few hundred quarians had disappeared entirely from Citadel space.

What wasn't public knowledge were the events surrounding that. First contact with an alien race, somewhere deep on the eastern side of the Attican Traverse, past relays that had since been disabled-intentionally, many thought. That was worrying, because when the Council started taking note of which relays no longer worked, everyone put together just how large a section of the galaxy was simply unavailable by mass relay any more, and the implication that there was a race out there who knew the relays well enough to just turn them off like flipping a switch.

And then, there was the ghost ship. The ghost ships, really.

Occasionally, one of the ghost ships came through a relay, sat still for a minute or two, then turned and ran right back into a relay before disappearing. Theories suggested they were mapping the relay network and what was on the end of each relay. Few people had ever gotten a good look at one and fewer still had been in the right place and time to get even a partial scan.

That is, until the Migrant Fleet's disappearance.

Right before the quarians disappeared entirely, a transmission came in from one of their agents within the Migrant Fleet. The first actual good scan of one of the ghost ships-not that it did much good, as apparently the vessel was made of some material that was resistant to scanning. But even that told them something. They had an idea of what they were working with. Small, presumably fast and agile ships, for their size. Very stealthy. Some salarians had run the numbers and given both theoretical and most likely performance models, and they were nothing particularly special. On par with a turian corvette of around the same size.

For fifty years, they were silent, save for the occasional sighting passing through a relay. That is, until the Omega incident. A month ago, one of the ghost ships-perhaps even the same one from the Migrant Fleet disappearance-had dropped out of the relay in the Omega system and proceeded to dock at the station. Everyone got their first good look at the aliens who owned those vessels and the general consensus was 'like an asari, but pink, and with hair.' Even Rix could admit that the females-or he thought they were females, at least-were appealing, in the same way the soft, curvy bodies of the asari were.

But that wasn't where the story ended. No, apparently the local STG agent had made the call and tried to steal the ship. According to intel from the salarians, shared with the Council, shortly after they got the ship to a dock to start looking it over, another alien ship had shown up-this one much larger. It was a bit bigger than a turian frigate, but that's what they were calling it. Once more, the big brains had given estimates of its capabilities and they were within expectations for a ship of that size.

Where the story verged into 'tall tale' territory was in how it was resolved-with site to site teleportation or 'beaming' technology, off-relay FTL that was faster than relay travel, stealth capabilities to slip down to the salarian home world, and a threat by the humans not to strike first, before they disappeared again. Rix thought there might be some kernel of truth in there somewhere, as did turian high command, but the majority of it sounded like the delusional ravings of a madman. The only thing that lent it credence were the data logs taken from the station itself, the omni-tools of those involved, and the fact that they all showed up on Sur'Kesh in a time-frame that should be impossible by relay travel-let alone, getting down to the planet undetected.

That was why they were out here today. Apparently, a human ship had been spotted at Tuchanka, backing up the claims that they were inviting the krogan and other non-Council races to a meeting at a newly constructed space station, somewhere in the Attican Traverse. That part was absolutely true, as turian intelligence had captured one such invitee and gotten confirmation out of him themselves, along with the location of the meeting.

High command had decided that they couldn't let the threat, the unspoken challenge, stand. The Council agreed. A message needed to be sent. That the Council were the only game in town and attempting to form some kind of alliance to counter them wouldn't be tolerated. They needed to show the strength of the Council and their ability to project power, even outside of Citadel space. Which was why Rix was here, along with an entire turian battle group. Over a hundred ships, including one of their dreadnoughts. It was, some felt, an excessive show of force.

Rix was pulled from his thoughts as the ship dropped out of FTL. Around them, the rest of the fleet began dropping out of FTL as well, as they began to muster and organize themselves, moving into formation.

"Sir! You're going to want to see this!"

"What is it, crewman?" Rix asked.

"Putting it up now," the sensor officer said, and the bridge holo tank sprang to life, displaying a view of the system-combined visual and sensor readings playing out in the air.

Rix wondered why they were using visual sensors, when he got his answer as something flashed, highlighted for his attention. It was a structure, impossible in size. It was a ring within a ring-the outer ring roughly ten times the size of the inner ring.

Reading off the sensor data, the inner ring was approximately 1600km in diameter, while the outer ring was 10000km in diameter. The thickness of the inner ring was roughly 22km. The outer ring, both the inside and outside of it, appeared to be covered in land. There was atmosphere there. Trees. Water. Clouds. It even appeared to have a gravity on par with the Citadel.

That's just not possible, he mused, his mandibles clicking in a nervous tick as he studied the display. I'm sure this system was explored and determined to be barren. Mined out a long, long time ago. Something like this would've been discovered centuries ago.

Then there was the other… oddity. A network of satellites surrounding the mass relay-currently silent, but sensors showed they were active, had scanned them, and then done nothing. It looked to his eye very much like proposed theoretical defense satellite installations to isolate a mass relay without shutting it down. The problem was, such a system was deemed to be both too costly and impossible for it to actually function as intended-that being, shooting down enemy ships exiting the relay-due to the distances involved.

"Sir," the communications officer announced. "Orders from the admiral. The fleet is to move towards the rings."

"Engage FTL and maintain formation," Rix ordered, moving back to his seat.

Several minutes later, they dropped out of FTL again, nearer to the rings. As soon as they did, his communications officer spoke up again.

"We've been hailed by the ring, sir. We've been given a flight path for docking and a warning. Also, I'm detecting ships on the surface of the ring. Hundreds of them."

Rix glanced at the display again, where it showed a path for landing on the outer ring. He recognized quarian ships, krogan, civilian models from a bunch of different factions, and more he didn't recognize but suspected were from the Terminus System. One of them, however, was very obviously one of the ghost ships-just parked right out in the open for anyone to see, in the designated docking area.

A large red no fly zone marked off the area directly in front of the inner ring as a danger zone and displayed a countdown timer, currently sitting at a minute. He wondered briefly what that was about, but a broadcast on all channels from the admiral aboard their dreadnought cut the thought off.

" Attention all vessels within the ring space and docked on the ring. This is Admiral Corinthus of the seventh turian patrol fleet. You are here in violation of Citadel law and ordered to leave the ring immediately and return to obit, where you will await boarding. This area is being put under quarantine by order of the Citadel Council. Any vessel that fails to comply, or who tries to flee the quarantine, will be de-"

" Admiral!"

"Captain!" Rix glanced up at his own sensor officer's warning tone, the transmission from the admiral closed to display the inner ring. "The ring is powering up!"

"Is it a weapon?" he wondered.

"No targeting from the ring, captain."

A moment later, he got his answer as to why the space in front of the ring was a no fly zone, as a silvery-blue blast of energy arched out from the interior of the inner ring, looking for all the world like a geyser of water. The font of energy settled down into the middle of the ring, a puddle of water dancing with silver light.

"We're picking up transmissions and receiving one ourselves. Looks like flight paths out of the ring."

" Out of the ring? What? You mean through?"

"No, sir. They originate from within the ring."

Rix stared at the display as, a moment later, ships began to come through the ring. It took him a moment, but the implications would have floored him if he hadn't been sitting. Those ships weren't coming from the back side of the inner ring. They hadn't been hiding somewhere and chose that moment to make a flashy entrance. No, what he was seeing was a means of FTL aside from mass relays. A portal of some kind.

Wormholes were always theorized, but no one has been able to make one…

The ships were of an unknown make, but not the ghost ships. As he watched, more and more poured through the ring. Frigates, destroyers, cruisers, fighters, a large carrier. Fifty of the larger vessels and hundreds of fighters. Then, his jaw dropped as an absolute beast of a ship came through the ring. It dwarfed their own dreadnought half again at 1.6km in length, and was visibly more heavily armed than any three ships in the turian fleet combined, including their dreadnought.

Rix swallowed thickly as the possibility for a fight, an actual fight that they might not win registered. "Ready weapons," he distantly heard himself ordering, falling back on his training.

A new transmission began-broadcast on all channels from the big dreadnought. The interior of a bridge appeared, where several humans could be seen sitting at their stations, all wearing tense expressions. Centered in the view was an older human male sitting in his own chair, and a younger looking male standing beside him with a smile. The older man wore a pristine white uniform with gold trim and had the bearing of a military man. Like recognizes like, and Rix pegged him as the captain of the dreadnought immediately. The other man wore some kind of dark suit, but not a uniform. He looked like a politician. Rix hated politicians, but the Citadel loved them.

" Good day, Admiral Corinthus, and welcome to Babylon. I am Victor Manswell, president of the Systems Alliance and with me," he tapped his hand on the chair, "is Admiral Grant of the Systems Alliance Navy, and captain of the First Out . You are currently in territory owned by the Systems Alliance and as such, neither you nor your Citadel have the authority to issue any quarantine or, in fact, give any orders to anyone in this system. The Babylon station you see before you is ours and any attack on it or anyone approaching or leaving it will be met with decisive force. Now, that being said, the purpose of this station and the reason we're gathered here today is to foster peace and new alliances. You're welcome to send a delegation down to attend, so long as you acknowledge that neither you nor the Citadel have any authority on Babylon whatsoever."

Admiral Corinthus joined the communication, his mandibles pulled into a deep frown as he glared at the humans. "The Citadel contests your claim over the system and this 'Babylon' ring. Take your ships and go back through that ring, or this will be considered an act of war."

Manswell sighed, shaking his head. "I'm sorry you feel that way. Unfortunately, that's just not how things are going to play out, admiral. You're outnumbered."

" By those on the ring? Civilian vessels and Terminus scum. They won't fight for you," Corinthus scoffed.

Beside President Manswell, Admiral Grant spoke up. At the same time, the display added more flight paths coming from the ring. Many more. "First Fleet inbound, ETA ten seconds Mr. President."

Chuckling, Manswell held his arms out in a 'what can you do' expression. "I guess we'll see, won't we?"

The timer ran down and from the ring, more ships started pouring through. These Rix recognized as the ghost ships. The smaller ships they had classed as corvettes, frigates like the one that had shown up to intimidate the STG and recover their stolen ship, and then more-larger. Cruisers. Carriers. More dreadnoughts that dwarfed their own. Then, the first of what must be some kind of capital ship came through-one hundred times the length of their dreadnoughts.

Rix felt his heart stop in his chest for a moment as panic flooded him. No one had ships that large. No one built to that scale. It was just impossible. It would bankrupt entire civilizations!

And then another of them came through. And another, and another. More and more. So many that Rix began to laugh quietly.

This, this must be some sort of cosmic joke!

That was when he noticed that the other ships, which had all moved out to fill the space in front of the inner ring, had left a hole in their formation. An impossibly massive hole. A premonition came over him then, along with a feeling of horror, and Rix realized that they weren't done yet.

His premonition came true only a moment later as one final ship came through the ring. Ten times the size of even the largest of the ghost ships-something his mind could scarcely grasp, when he tried to think about the sheer cost in materials, manpower, and energy required to make the damn thing. It was easily sixteen hundred times the size of the turian dreadnought Admiral Corinthus was on.

A new transmission joined the call and a view from inside the biggest ship dropped into place between President Manswell and Admiral Corinthus. Standing up from her chair, a blonde human woman brushed her hair away from her pointed ears and settled into parade rest, her uniform one of the form hugging variety similar to those the asari preferred and showing off every mouthwatering curve of her body.

Blue eyes stared into the display as her lips pulled into a small frown. They shifted in the direction of President Manswell. "Victor, stand by for beaming. I'll send you to where master Leon is waiting. Admiral Grant, Beta is sending you and the Systems Alliance fleet a new course. Please move into orbit around Babylon along the designated route."

" Thank you, Alpha," President Manswell chuckled, and a moment later he disappeared in a note of sound and a white flash.

Admiral Grant nodded, turning off to the side. "Helm, follow the course provided."

The human ships quickly began to clear out of the inner ring space, leaving behind only the fleet of ghost ships. The now named 'Alpha' turned a look on Admiral Corinthus. After a few moments of silent contemplation, she nodded. "Admiral Corinthus. You and a retinue of not more than ten plus a pilot are welcome to take a shuttle down to Babylon and attend the proceedings. Your fleet, however, is not welcome. Choose one ship to remain behind to act as your transport out of system, when you're ready to leave. Not your dreadnought. Your fleet has one hour to leave this system or they will be destroyed."

" Now see he-" The admiral disappeared in a flash of light and sound, only to reappear on the bridge of the other ship, standing in front of Alpha. "-re…"

Alpha reached out and laid a land on the admiral's shoulder, who had fallen silent. She smiled, patting his armor hard enough to nearly make him collapse. "One hour, Earth standard time. Starting now."

With that, the admiral was beamed back to his own bridge and the transmission shut off. Rix reached up, palming his face. We're all going to die, aren't we? I had hoped to one day go in a glorious battle, but this? This isn't going to be a 'battle,' it'll be a slaughter. I didn't think it would be today… And how long is an 'Earth standard hour?'

"Sir," his communications officer spoke up. "Orders from the admiral. We're to stay behind to act as his transport. Everyone else is to leave immediately. He's, he's sending down a shuttle. We're receiving a flight path from the Avalon-that's the big one, apparently. They're putting us in orbit above the ring with the rest of the ships."

A quiet chuckle escaped Rix. "Not today, then."

"Sir?"

"Helm, follow their instructions. Comms, tell the admiral we're at his disposal. I'll be in my quarters."

Unspoken, he tacked on, Checking my suit.

Links to my stuff.

Sine's Dumping Ground for Decommissioned Projects.

Fanfic

Original

My subscribestar

. Commissions by Subscribestar or , $10/1k words.

Now with Discord!