Author's Note: Apologies ladies and gents, but as I've stated previously I will be taking a month off from this story for NaNoWriMo. That said please check out my new Story 'The Warlock Route' Please? I'm gonna be ten chapters into it by the time that I finish. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 66: Rannoch Part 1
14M 26D 06H Until the Colossus Fires
Once again going over the results of his examination, Mordin continued to lament the presence of so many mad scientists in the Galaxy lacking even the most basic ethical restraint. Mordin's long since accepted the fact that the majority of those mad scientists are his own people, he's made peace with this fact, but now he must wrestle with the fact that some of the most brilliant minds in the Union's territory are also bloody mad as well. Case in point.
"Normal Unbidden Head Space." The first hologram appeared on the table projector that Mordin had prepared, it was mostly hollow, really it had more in common with a Tesla lamp than it did the inside of a skull. "Bard Head Space." The first hologram shrunk and was put to the side, replaced by another Hologram, similar shape but that was in the end of it, inside of a complex network of interweaving circuits layered on top of one another in the shape of a brain. "Positronic brain." The Second Hologram was shrunk away and replaced by another hologram identical to it.
"Bard Brain and Positronic Brain look identical to one another." Escheel stated as she leaned over the table and examined it.
"Agreed." Mordin followed up.
"So someone... built this thing?" Councillor Nyreen Zindel was far from a scientist, but she liked to think that she provided a more grounded Turian view on matters, as it stood she was still hung up on the creature she was looking at. Nyreen was still wrapping her head around the concept of the Unbidden, let alone this apparently super version of the energy monsters.
"Yes." Mordin stated simply as he worked his omni-tool, being the very pinnacle of a Scientific Salarian that he was, he delights in answering not just the question asked but also the lead up questions that remained unasked and preempting the follow up questions that he had no intention of ever letting anyone ask. "Disentegrator example of Unbidden technology. Composed of same material as the Unbidden themselves. Meaning possible to manufacture other technology using same material. Grey Box, Psychic Dampeners and Amplifiers, certain performance enhancers won't dignify with mention all common in Union space. More theoretically possible." Mordin put the Head holograms away in favour of full body side by side comparison of a Warlock and the Bard. "Entire body composed of interlocking Zro-Positronic circuits held together with psychic energy, head area contains cone shaped organ like a speaker, capable of vibrating like a speaker to produce sound. Creature weightless, support skeleton and muscle unnecessary. Hard to find organs for storage and distribution of energy in either specimen. Need to conduct more tests to find out."
"But can we talk with it?" Tevos reminded the group that they were here to attempt a positive relationship with a hostile force.
"Allow me." Mordin was head of this research lab for many reasons, his brilliant mind, his strong sense of morals, the respect and authority that he's earned through his years of dedicated service. But walking over to the containment cell and pressing a finger to the intercom for it he demonstrated another reason. "Hello My Baby~! Hello My Darling~!" Mordin suddenly broke out into a short merry tune.
"HeLlO mY RAgTiMe GaAAL~!" And to the surprise of many the Bard Finished the line.
"You guys have no idea how legendary that line is." Shepard was more amused by the creature breaking out into Ragtime than anything else about it.
"So it can communicate?" Tevos asked looking at the strange creature before her.
"Correct. Music is language of the soul. This doesn't have much else going for it." Mordin stated as he indicated the increasingly bizarre creature. "It is only natural then it would use song to communicate. Or so I thought. Observe." Clearing his throat Mordin once more pressed his finger into the speaker on the containment cell. "Hello My Baby. Hello My Darling." In strong contrast from before Mordin's tone of voice was flat, less like he was singing his heart out and more like he was reading lines off of a report, and despite the same words having been said to it the Bard remained speechless, having made his point Mordin took his finger off the button. "Now what have I done differently."
"Your tone of voice was flat, it held no passion." Admiral Shepard stated bluntly. "Is that why it didn't respond to you?"
Again Mordin held down the button.
"Hello My Baby~! Hello My Darling~!"
"HeLlO mY RAgTiMe GaAAL~!"
Mordin indicated the Bard with both hands as if he had just proven his point.
"Looked back at previous video footage of attempts to interview Unbidden for reference, only time that got a response was when the interviewer lost their patience and yelled at them." Well knowing how to talk to the creature was a good step one.
"Why is it using song clips then?" Amanda asked sounding confused.
"Unbidden cannot produce coherent thoughts in the same way that we do." Dr. Adolpho was eyeing the Bard the same way you'd eye a steer before cutting it up for a barbecue. "Thus it makes do by borrowing our coherent thoughts, the ones that it understands anyway." Thus the reason why it was using song clips.
"Is there anything else we should know about it before we continue?" Admiral Shepard asked looking at the Bard suspiciously.
"It doesn't like Lawson, and I don't think it's too fond of you either." With that said Mordin stepped aside and allowed Amanda to talk with the prisoner.
"I'm Amanda Shepard of the Union expeditionary fleet~" Dragons it was hard to speak like this. "What if anything shall we call you~?" It was always polite to start a conversation with someone you don't know with introductions.
"I aM tHe WaNdErEr~!" A familiar line coming out broken and distorted. Amanda hoped Mordin could fix this thing's speaker, and maybe give it a microphone and some language software.
"Wander it is then. Do you know why your people are on this plane~?"
"-CoUnT- -InVaaaSiOn~!" The two words rapidly shifted in tone, likely because they came from two different songs, that wasn't nearly as concerning as what they meant together though.
"'Counter Invasion?' Who invaded you~?"
"YoooooUU~!" A pause as the Admiral pondered the implication of the statement. The Unbidden only appeared in the galaxy after the invention of Jump Drives, the general theory was that the technology left open a back door for the hyper aggressive interdimensional invaders to attack, or if their territory was being invaded then launch a entirely justified counterstrike, especially if they did some kind of harm while they were there.
"What happened to your plane of existence~?"
"YoU cAmE iN lIkE a WrrrEcKiNg BaLL~!"
"It sounds like your 'Jump Drives' did a fair bit of damage!" Tevos easily picked up on the opportunity to mock the Union's perceived shortcomings, considering how much of her ass was being kicked politically she needed it.
"Thank you Tevos. I needed a reminder that we accidentally genocided an entire Sapient race!" Amanda snapped before she breathed out. "Adolpho. An explanation please."
"Zro is a extremely versatile but delicate substance, it's closer to energy than it is matter and for all we know it is only the form it takes in this plane of existence." The Dolphin like doctor explained. "In theory anything that would disrupt its form in that dimension would cause wide spread destruction."
"And then the Unbidden came to this dimension to stop the use of Jump drives and since they couldn't communicate they went with their next best idea." Amanda just let out a sigh as she looked at the bard straight in the eye.
"What do you know about your realm~?"
"-cAn'T gO hOmE~!" A oddly cheerful tone considering the context of what the answer means.
"Do you know why~?"
"No TuRnInG Baaack~!" So. A one way trip then. Either manifesting on this plane was a costly investment, or they did something worse than smash their buildings with their blundering. Lovely.
"Tell us about the other two factions that came in after you~?"
"-eNeMy AcRosS tHe LiNe~!"
"There's more of them?" Tevos had an horrified look on her face.
"There Were." Adolpho gave a follow up. Oh yeah, because that makes her feel so much better!
"Well, the three of you did start fighting the moment that they showed up~"
"Their entire realm was in danger and they broke down into petty into fighting!?" Nyreen had a disbelieving look on her face, Turian trained instincts kicking in hard at the story.
"Makes sense." Escheel had a different opinion. "Many clans were taking shots at each other when Union invaded, not because they were trying to save themselves, but because they realised that they had their last chance to get revenge for old grudges."
Shepard recalled how supposedly Mordin had gone to Tuchanka for similar reasons as he would soon die of old age, well he would likely live longer now thanks to the Thorian in his body but still. Amanda continued her interrogation of the Bard, after that the Councilors got their turns, Mordin had to step in to act as a mediator, which was good because Nyreen's singing seemed to cause the Bard actual physical pain.
For now though, on to Rannoch.
14M 22D 22H Until the Colossus Fires
They were late. That was the first thing that came to Tali's mind when she saw Liara's ship enter Rannoch's atmosphere, which prompted a mental pat on the back from Tali. Ships are a huge point of interest for Quarians, for all Quarians. For centuries a critical part of all Quarian's culture has been ships, the very arms and legs of the Quarian people in which all of them were forced to inhabit thanks to the Council's unreasonable conditions, the ultimate gold medal prize, to get your hands on a whole ass space ship is to effectively guarantee that you are set for life in Quarian society, or at least that's the way that it use to be. Still there's no one who could say that they would be worse off without their home-world, though the constant attacks from the Contingency they could do without. The fact of the matter was that Tali had been promised help, and help was late.
"Liara, good to finally see you again." Liara didn't miss the double meaning behind Tali's words, and frankly speaking she couldn't blame her.
"Sorry, there was an incident." Liara stated as she shook the suited woman's hand. "A couple of them actually."
"Don't worry. 'The Turians come first' is a tale as old as the fleet among my people." Which Liara interpreted as 'as usual we played second fiddle to the Turians.' "Well I hope that at least we can clean our problems up quickly."
"Agreed." Liara was more than willing to make up for lost time. "What do we know about the situation."
"There's a terminator on Rannoch, we're not sure where or who but it explains our problems as of late." They were getting bupkis out of the surveillance of the contingency ships, which could just mean that they're hitting a stone wall, or rather a time dilation wall courtesy of the Contingencies time manipulation technology. Except that Tali has tried everything that she can think of to penetrate the time dilation field, she could accept getting different results from so many different kinds of tests but the same result over and over again? No. Someone or something is screwing with her test results, and the easiest way to find out is with a telepath.
"You haven't been able to conduct the Bleed test?" Garrus was the second to walk off of the ship, though the look Tali gave him might make him run back on board.
"Many Quarians are still suffering from shoddy immune systems. Others were messed up worst than what they started after the Contingency got into their suits and nano-tech." So they can't exactly present wrists to check for veins.
"Well than time for a witch hunt." Shepard was the last of the individuals that stepped off of Liara's ship. "Let's start with the people you're working with and go from there."
Tali did have a relatively obvious suspect. She wasn't acting suspiciously, anymore than usual that is, she did however walk off of a Contingency ship relatively unscathed when the only other organic had been brutalised beyond recognition. It didn't help Tali's suspicions that the woman was in an ideal position to sabotage her efforts. For Now Tali returned to the laboratory/command centre where experiments were being conducted to find a way of breaking through the Contingency's sensor block.
14M 22D 21H Until the Colossus Fires
Shepard wasn't the one to follow Tali into the laboratory in order to do a telepathic sweep, no the eight foot tall super soldier was too noticeable and too well known, but no one suspected the nondescript Asari technician in worker's fatigues doing routine maintenance.
"Your friends just got back from Palaven correct?" Admiral Raan was like a second Mother to Tali, so it's only natural that she asks to make sure of Tali's good mental health.
"With good news I hope?" Korris over the years had defaulted to the position as the admiralty board's diplomat, thus if there was a shift in the galaxy's political stage he needed to know about it.
"The Reaper tech on Palaven has been cleaned out." The Turian's will be reeling for years that the source of their technology was scavenged and reverse engineered reaper tech as opposed to Protheans like they initially assumed, it was moot point: it was all based on Reapers anyway, the issue was the degree of removal. "Their acting Primarch also got his legs regrown by their artificial Thorian variant." Tali provided the follow up as well. "We even brought some of it with us for the farms."
"Good." Gerrel was the military commander of the Quarian Fleet, also he was like an uncle to Tali due to his close relationship with her father, if not for the peace agreement with the Geth she would've joined him on his ship. "It'll be good to have the Turian's on the front line again." He also had an unpopular positive opinion of the Turians. "And we'll be providing tech support as soon as we get our own Thorian grown too."
"It'll go a long way to fixing our immune systems too." Admiral Rael was Tali's father, and more important a part of the scientific fleet, while Xen researched synthetics Rael researched organics, specifically agriculture, medicine and most recently the best way to adapt his people's bodies and immune systems back to his home world. The samples Liara was carrying on her ship would be a huge boon towards that end. "Good work Tali." Unfortunately for Tali her adoptive aunt and uncle were better parents to her than her own parent, her mother died when she was young as part of the countless complications of the Quarian immune system, her father on the other hand and his own obsession with trying to reclaim the home-world meant that she has only the vaguest memories of either of them.
"My interest lies in the technology that has been found in Palaven." Admiral Xen was top researcher for the Quarians, Rael was focused on getting their people and home world ready for each other, Xen was concerned with technology and programming, a nice way of saying AI, which also meant that she was the one who was chiefly responsible for trying to dismantle the threat that the Contingency represents. "What are you doing with that!?" So it was mildly concerning that the technician that Tali had brought in was already taking apart Xen's console.
"I'm preventing you from wiping out your logs before you get your head torn off and hooked into another computer."
Xen's arm reached out to grab the Asari around her throat faster than what a Quarian should be capable of. If not for the five rifle rounds punching through the wall of the laboratory and striking Xen she would've succeeded in crushing the woman's neck. The first shot manage to tear through Xen's arm giving it the robin hood treatment. The 2nd and 3rd shots tore through the leg and bringing Xen down to a knee before the last two shots went through Xen's neck with enough force to snap it clean off and fall backwards on the ground exposing sparking circuits as the lights in her eyes started to flicker. Tali worked fast to digitally Isolate "Xen's" head, simultaneously ensuring that she didn't breach the servers and cause anymore damage than she already had or delete valuable data inside her own head.
14M 22D 10H Until the Colossus Fires
From the point of 'Xen's' unceremonious 'arrest' the group worked fast, from Xen's console they got a more or less exact idea of the extent of the damage done and was about to be done. Simply put Rannoch held value for the Contingency too, albeit not in the same way it had for the Quarian's, Rannoch was the hub of sensor activity for the Council and Union against the Contingency and other threats coming out of the Terminus sector, conversely if something happened to the planet then that hub of activity would be moved elsewhere, alternatively if everything continued business as normal the Contingency could keep feeding false information. So long as Terminator-Xen was here the Council and Union would be more or less blind to to the Contingency's actions, that said it was always the Contingency's intention to destroy the Quarian's attempts to resettle their planet and permanently strip Rannoch of life as they intended to do to every other life bearing world in the entire galaxy. Rigging every single Anti-matter generator that had been set up on the planet to go off at the same time seemed like a pretty good way of doing it. Also a good way of destroying the planet itself.
Smok slid to a stop in front of one of the reactors, already his psionics was weaving a net of heat and energy transference as he desperately worked to keep the machine that would detonate with enough force to turn Canada into a Crater from overloading with power, just one of many trained union pyrokinetics that were deployed to keep one of many reactors from blowing their tops. In the mean time crack teams of Quarian engineers were working around the clock to undo the damage done by the Terminator Masquerading as their admiral, the unfortunate thing about Contingency programming was that it has a really bad habit of not staying deleted, in much the same way that there's no such thing as 'deleted' in the digital world the contingency program constantly worms it way back into the servers filling in missing pieces of code along the way, so what you call a 'plan B' might be necessary. While Psykers worked to literally hold the generators together with sheer willpower and Quarian engineers worked to try and undo/manage Contingency sabotage specialists were called in to apply a less 'delicate' touch to the situation.
"This the right place Tali?" Grunt asked while he looked up at a massive tower of severs that went all the way to the top of the two story tall room.
"Mot Grunt! I don't have the Leeway to walk you through the facility and try to keep it together at the same time! Check the Map I gave you!" Tali sounded a little stressed out, which was understandable the alarms constantly going off indicating the imminent meltdown that she was working to abort.
Grunt brought up his newly upgraded Omni-tool, now with a built in Holographic Rare Crystal projector. It made his hand itch a little bit but he wasn't so good with the little letters. The Red arrow of 'You Are Here' had overlapped with a Yellow Arrow of 'Your destination' to create a green 'You have arrived at you destination' arrow.
"What do I do now?" In the show's Grunt watched this would be the moment where Tali would tell him the long process of trying to carefully disable all this equipment at which point in time he would-
"Smash it." Tali's voice ruined Grunt's mood.
"You sure? This might be important stuff that you're asking me to break." Grunt made his confusion known.
"It is broken. The Contingency has infected all of this equipment and we can't risk using it anymore. Break. It!"
Grunt pouted, his moment to look cool had been ruined, though there were things that he could smash so he didn't have much room to complain.
14M 15D 17H Until the Colossus Fires
A solid week had passed consisting of putting out the proverbial fires, but the combination of Union Psykers and Quarian engineers use to holding together machinery with prayer and duct tape had managed to pull off the victory. Rannoch wasn't without power lacking it's fancy new Anti-matter plants. The Geth had maintained and upgraded a variety of existing Quarian energy plants designed specifically to take advantage of the planet's plentiful Solar, Wind and Hydro potential that ancient Quarians had built, since upgraded/checked for potential points of contingency infiltration by the Union and now back up and running again. What this means in layman's terms is that the planet's energy generating potential is once again online, restoring Rannoch as a hive of activity against the Contingency, with renewed vigor.
With the Introduction of the DAP Thorian food production has gone up, medical issues caused by the Contingency botching the Quarian's immune system has been resolved, and now immune to Reaper indoctrination the Turian's joined the front-lines in full alongside their Quarian Allies. Newly Reinstated Generals Sparatus and Victus were now meeting with Union and Quarian officials as they worked to sort out actual information that is coming in from the Contingency and figure out actual solutions to deal with the crisis.
"Near as we can tell, Xen's reports were mostly accurate." Admiral SpeedJunkie (Spirits/Ancestors they hoped that meant something different in Tebrid than it does in their languages, for one thing their universal translation doesn't even work on exact words) was the one giving the report. "There was no way to cover up the huge gravitational push or time dilation effect of this 'White Hole' so she didn't. That is the extent of her truth." The Tebrid produced heavily distorted hologram, various algorithms and boxes were flying over the image as the contents of hologram slowly unravelled into view. "The Anti-Gravity waves have been accelerating light particles leaving the area of effect forming Tachyon Particles." Theoretical Faster than light particles, until now limited to the domain of cheap Salarian 'speculative fiction' novels. The Two Turian's turned to Admiral Shepard with suspicion.
"No I was not aware of how to create Tachyon Particles." The Admiral stated bluntly. "Nor Do I know the implications for the future for this. It's one of the many write ups to be expected from you in the near future as the head of the scientific fleet but for now, please continue."
"Of course. The first image should finish it's de-fragging any moment now." Junkie had a flare for the Dramatic they'll give him that much, any sane person, and most sane Tebrids, wouldn't bring this picture up unless they already knew what it's contents were. "This image was compiled after directly extracting the sensor logs from the past four months from the various Turian Ships watching the border." Even if 'Xen' had sabotaged the Quarian's sensors thanks to the Contingencies White Hole device the light waves would've easily reached the Turian Patrols. What came out of the Hologram was a thing of horror, moon sized silver spheres in different stages of construction, a dent in the side the size of the continent of Africa that wasn't too different from a satellite dish in shape.
"Is that what I think it is!?" Han'Gerrel stood up and gaped in horror at what he was looking at.
"A Colossus, or several of them interlocked together. I don't know the practicality of building something of that size but it can't be good." Admiral Shepard stated letting out a sigh. "We can safely assume that they've consumed most of the Reaper scrap in their territory. As for what kind of purpose this serves, Colossus class weapons are meant to affect entire worlds. Altering a Population on a genetic or psychological level, reshaping the landscape or atmosphere, or simply burning the world all together."
The implication of something the size of several of those things put together hung in the air, though Victus was the one to voice it.
"System Killers." The Turian General summarised the situation as he leaned forward and rest his chin on his hands.
"That is most likely yes. I cannot begin to imagine how they would move such a thing, but I would imagine that eating a sun or two would provide the necessary power assuming that they haven't salvaged several hundred Reaper hearts." So in layman's terms, they have to get a task force together to kill some Star Killing abominations, this is on top of being over a year away from actually getting their own Colossus operational.
Review Section:
Monster King: I will, not immediately but I will.
RonaldM40196867: If you say so. I don't know how that is, I suppose EDI is the one controlling it. People go crazy for Halo alot.