Author's Note: Did y'all miss me!? Honestly, I didn't know about the Astral Rifts when I started writing the hole to Unreality plotline, I'm pretty sure the trailer dropped in December in fact. But now that I know about it well... *Indiscriminate Frustrated Noises* So yeah, that throws around about a third of my plans for the Terminus Sector. Read, Review Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 67: Rannoch Part 2
14M 13D 18H Until the Colossus Fires
The task of engineering a ship capable of surviving the rigours of navigating the waves of super-anti-gravity had been left to the joint Union Quarian task force stationed on Rannoch. They were the closest world to the anti-gravity waves, the hub of technological activity in the area and perhaps most importantly, the world that they had most recently cleaned of Contingency activity. Liara Conversely tasked herself with recruitment of suitable personnel for the mission.
As things stood she had identified the most suitable candidates in both Council and Union space and had asked them both to meet with her on Rannoch.
For all of his grace as a master assassin Thane Krios was an awkward man who led an awkward life and was now in an awkward situation. The Drell were native to a harsh desert world known as Rakhana, the lizard like people developing an extremely potent edict memory as a way of memorising the migration patterns of potential prey and predators as well as precious few water sources and oasis's, too potent one might even say. The Drell managed to exhaust the already scarce natural resources of the world through sheer over-population and over-industrialisation.
The Hanar learned of the situation with the drell, and against council laws established after the Rachni and the Krogan made a effort to rescue as many of the planet's 11 billion inhabitants as possible. The Council of course soon learned of the several thousand Pre-FTL aliens the Hanar had managed to secretly uplift, and needless to say weren't particularly thrilled. Months of fruitless debate later, Rakhana erupted into full blown nuclear war and the billions of the planet's native population had been reduced to migrating pocket communities in the hundreds. The conclusion the Council reached was that the few thousand Drell the Hanar rescued would remain on Hanar worlds as their responsibility to ensure that they did not become a second Krogan, and for the most part they were quite successful, while the remaining Drell of Rakhana would lay in the bed they made until such time they could escape their world themselves.
Of course part of this success was that unlike the case with the Krogan and the Genophage the Drell already had a fatal genetic defect built into their system. Turns out one cannot simply transplant a species native to a dry, arid environment to a predominantly wet oceanic one with no problems, kepral syndrome is what it was called, named for the first doctor to diagnose the condition, lungs that were originally built to help the body retain and suck in as much moisture from the environment as possible now sucked in with every breath more moisture than what previous generations would've in their entire life, the most precious resource to previous generations of Drell were now causing them to drown on dry land: water.
Treatments in the form of lung transplants had of course been developed but Thane was simply too old and in his own opinion too unworthy after a life poorly lived to get the treatment, then one day as he was making peace with his gods he abruptly threw up all the water in his lungs. The Thorian his doctors called it, a type of hyper adaptive symbiotic fungus with a habit off correcting it's host's biological defects, it had secretly been introduced to the entire galaxy's food supply as a counter measure to the Reapers, an act of god a tiny voice in the back of his mind said, and right now it had need of his services. Thus, Thane now found himself here on Rannoch where his talents as assassin and infiltrator was needed the most, all of the information above recalled within the span of a few moments as he received his drink, a martini.
"Greetings Mr. Krios." A deep synthesised voice spoke from the drink coaster.
"Greetings Shadow Broker." The master assassin replied. "I want you to understand that were I not desperate, we would not be having this conversation right now." Thane stated narrowing a glare.
"Your wife's murder, you have my apologies, if not my sympathy."
Thane slammed his fist down on the table in anger.
The first time he met Irikah he had been on a job, a corrupt politician that needed to die, the first and last time that he relied on a sniper rifle to do the job, partly because he had missed the first shot, but mostly because as soon as she had realised what was happening Irikah had stepped in to shield the man from further danger. He died later of course, to Thane's more tried and true methods, but afterwards he had sought out the woman who had risked her own life to save another. The two would later fall in love, and Thane would go on to retire from the Hanar special forces that he had been a part of since he was six years old, but raising a family still cost money and so Thane would make one of the biggest mistakes of his life: he continued his work as a assassin. Long time spent far away from his family caused them to grow distant, without the anonymity of the Hanar his enemies became aware of their existence, a Batarian Pirate crew whose captain he killed sought revenge on him, and so bought the identities of his wife and child from the Shadow Broker. Irikah was tortured to death in front of his Son's Kolyat's eyes, and no one mourns like a Drell assassin. Thane hunted down each of the men responsible and ensured that each of them experienced the pain that Irikah had suffered and that Kolyat would have to live with for the rest of his life, all but one.
"Do not speak of her in front of me again, Broker!" The Voice of God Thane had been hearing, explained the situation in advance. The Broker Thane once knew is dead, another had taken his place, it even led him to the top secret archive in the citadel that explained the Yahg, where it came from and how it had died. But the new broker had taken the old one's position and power, and he would personally see to it that they accepted responsibility for their predecessor's actions. "I prepared an inheritance for my son through some Volus banker contacts, they have informed me that he has claimed his inheritance ahead of what I intended, and worse yet made a purchase at a gun store on the Citadel."
"The Galaxy is becoming a dangerous place Mr. Krios." The Coaster replied simply. "Does it not make sense to make an investment in one's own protection?"
"Let's not insult either of our intelligence anymore than we already have." Thane held up the coaster with his hand. "Find my son, then we can do business." Thane threw the coaster into the air and shot it out of the air. At the sound of the gunshot everyone ducked for cover, but by the time they looked up again Thane had already disappeared again.
14M 13D 15H Until the Colossus Fires
Thane was right to be concerned about his son, for all that the old man was never there for his son growing up the boy was ultimately shaping up to follow in his father's footsteps. Liara's contacts included a broker who was used to arrange for an assassination, one corrupt politician trying to kill the other corrupt politician that he was running with. One simple stun grenade in his skycar was enough to scare the poor bastard into trying to run away to his private safe house, where Kolyat was waiting for him. Gifted with neither the advance assassination training of his father or the cold blooded ruthlessness of a seasoned mercenary Kolyat arranged for another stun charge connected to a remote detonator to take the man's bodyguards down, the one Krogan he hired was now locked outside by the security measures of the man's own bunker. Kolyat waited for his target on his own couch, a gun his hand raised at the poor bastard's head. And then the gun disappeared, the target and the room, replaced by a familiar room to Kolyat, his child hood living room, still with his mother's blood staining the carpet.
"Yeah this isn't a very nice place to hold a conversation." The room suddenly changed, an outdoor patio made out of wood, attached to a log cabin. To his side Kolyat had a pitcher full of some kind of yellow mystery liquid with slices of yellow fruit.
"Too much?" Leo appeared across the table from Kolyat. He heard rumours of the Union and their psychics, guess now he had proof.
"What are you going to do with me?" Kolyat poured himself a glass of the mystery liquid.
"Nothing bad, as a start that little scene from before?" The one where he got to watch his mother being tortured to death? "You're gonna forget about that. You're still going to know how she died but you're not going to live with the trauma of watching it happen."
In many ways the Drell's perfect memory is a curse, people talk about things they can never unsee? No one has the right to say that to a Drell. He remembers everything, and he can never forget. It's why he hates his father, knowing what he is capable of his Mom would still be alive if he was there, it's why he wants to be like him, knowing that if he was he wouldn't have to deal with this nightmare.
"Good luck with that." Kolyat responded with a cynical tone of voice. "What else?"
"When you wake up you're going to be at the C-Sec academy to take your lessons and become a C-Sec officer." Leo stated bluntly. "The Next time your father calls you to meet up you're going to go to that meeting. You don't have to stay but you will show up."
14M 13D 01H Until the Colossus Fires
Kolyat awoke with a jolt as he looked around the waiting room? Right he had signed up for Sector Security.
"Kolyat!" The young Drell jolted to standing position. "I hope you don't plan on sleeping like that on the job!"
And so thus a promising young Sector Security officer started his career at the academy.
14M 12D 21H Until the Colossus Fires
Liara was tapping her fingers impatiently as she looked at the screen before her. Her second pick for the mission to deal with the Contingency's White Hole was late for their meeting, which while unfortunate wasn't- Liara quickly reached up and grabbed the object that was being pressed into her temple, pushing herself back as she aimed the weapon at the head of the person who had pulled it on her, being met with two revelations, the first being that the assailant in question was invisible, and the second being that the weapon she confiscated was a toy gun.
"Have I made my point yet Doctor T'Soni?" The cloak dropped, a skinny woman was revealed and her features obscured by the hood she wore.
"Security in this place is abysmal." Liara was beginning to understand why the Shadow Broker regularly called people in here to off them personally, it would've created a mythos of 'do not enter.'
"It's better than most, except for maybe the Contingencies base." Which now led to the brass tacks of the situation.
"So you already understand the jist of the situation Miss Kasumi Goto?"
"A vigilante, a master assassin, a galactic class thief-" Kasumi smiled as she used her hands to frame her face. "-quite possibly a group of super soldiers and at least one other person so top secret even I haven't learned their identity are going to infiltrate the most heavily secured facility in the known Galaxy on a one way trip to destroy one of the biggest threats to the safety of the galaxy in existence." Kasumi leaned into her clasped hands as she grinned. "I have a lil something I need some help with in return. Nothing major really, a rescue mission honestly, of sorts."
"You already know that we're going to help you, stop beating around the bush." Liara snapped the earlier scare having worn down on her patience.
"Well it's complicated, tell me what do you know about Grey Boxes?"
14M 07D 10H Until the Colossus Fires
Donovan Hock was many things, Arms Dealer, smuggler of all manner of foul substances, a self proclaimed patron of the arts. Kasumi would always know him a the man that murdered the love of her life. She and her boyfriend Keiji attempted to break into Hock's vault where he keeps his private collection, all illegally gained. Keiji and Kasumi attempted a two prong infiltration, Kasumi nearly died in Hock's lobby leading to the vault, Keiji did die in Hock's office, the man taking his customised Grey Box as a trophy, apparently a rather common occurrence with his enemies, a man's entire life put on display in a personal museum. Kasumi specifically knows that Hock's mansion in Bekenstein will have security at its weakest during the party for his various clientele, what Kasumi wanted from Liara was a way in.
"Doctor T'Soni!" Hock was sleazier than Kasumi described, too much hair-gel, too much moustache oil, and a voice that'll make your skin crawl. "I trust you have the item you discussed?" Technically speaking, Liara's reputation was so squeaky clean that under normal circumstances Hock would never go near her, but the promise of what she brought with her? That was too much to ignore, and luckily for him all she wanted in return was credits. "Do you have it?"
Liara was wearing an elegant gown that hugged her body nicely and had a slit leading all the way up to her hip. Liara gestured behind her to the crate large enough to hold a fully grown Krogan, the walls falling away to reveal a piece of hull suspended in a mass effect field and encased in a block of sound proofed steelglass.
"A piece of Sovereign's hull, blown off during the battle over the citadel!" Hock looked so excited that he couldn't contain himself.
"We'll need to run it through a security scan of course. Just a minor precaution with all new items you understand." Liara watched as the dead skin of a dead god was passed through a massive security scanner, and after a few tense moments a ding indicated that it was clean and thus it was lowered into the vault. "I of course understand that it must wound you to let such a piece of history go." Hock held out his arm for Liara to hook onto.
"If you knew what this piece represents you would've paid ten times the price." Liara reluctantly accepted the arm as Hock led her to the party.
Inside of the Vault mechanical arms moved the entire containment unit onto a platform and locked it into place in a slot on the floor. A ghostly electric blue figure floated out of the piece on display. The vault was the singularly most secure facility on the planet, and so naturally it was also the place Hock kept his most important technology, the energy generator for the shield he had around his mansion that kept the Union from doing things like bombarding the place from orbit. The Bard's various positronic circuits combined with it's innate psionic power gave it a unique ability: psychic positronic circuit manipulation, in other words technomancy. After engaging the Vault's failsafes it was permanently locked, not even the complete lost of power of the facility could get the door open, which is exactly what the Bard ended up doing. Moments later, the mansion became the sight of a crater.
14M 07D 09H Until the Colossus Fires
Contrary to popular belief Kasumi doesn't just have a sophisticated cloaking device, though it is there, her main feature is a short range teleportation device based on the Adjutants wormholes. Kasumi yoinked Liara to the safety of the vault the moment the shields went down and then Hock and every criminal he had inside of the venue were simultaneously vaporised leaving only his ridiculously expensive vault and the priceless artefacts within intact.
"And yoink!" Kasumi plucked her lover's grey box out of the rack he was being kept in. As a thief it wounded her to be leaving the rest of the vault intact but she'll get over, and steal everything here anyway. Right now she was noticing something infinitely more concerning. "Doctor T'Soni, there's an Unbidden inside of the vault."
"Yeah." Liara noted that Kasumi wasn't wrong to be worried about that one. "This is Wander, he'll be your partner for the infiltration." Kasumi looked between the Bard and Liara a few times before she accepted reality for what it is.
"Oh."
14M 01D 10H Until the Colossus Fires
Garrus, Kasumi, Thane and Wander were all gathered together in a meeting room as Liara explained to them the plan.
"Before you are a elite team of infiltration experts and saboteurs, Former C-Sec officer turned Omega based Vigilante Garrus Vakarian. Master thief Kasumi Goto. Master assassin Thane Krios and of Wander here, a unique experimental Unbidden with the ability to control machinery and conduct itself through electronics." Bit of a scare for Mordin when he found out it could do that. "He's also immune to mass effect fields, I trust you all understand what that means?"
"We send him to infiltrate the machine's territory in advance." Garrus concluded bluntly. "What then?"
"Exotic particle bombs." Liara summed up bluntly.
The singularly most destructive weapon of mass destruction that they had access to arguably short of a colossi, the one that tears a hole open into the fabric of reality itself, the one that destroyed a continent sized super weapon that was being built by the Collectors. And they heard Liara right, she did say bombs, because it would take multiples of these things to get the job done.
"We have little idea what the Contingency is capable of at this point. For us it's been a few months since they started to rear their ugly heads, for them it's already been millions of years. Their technology already outstrips our own by at least that much." The Geth are well known for the development of new technology, prior to the Union coming along any intact articles of Geth technology had a huge bounty on it in Council space. Where the machines lack in imagination they make up for in a willingness for brute force innovation, and that was before the Union with it's own advance technology was thrown into the innovation blender, the organic mimicking positronic brain on top of that, as well as the slew of new ideas that pop up in a digital war of 'delete' and 're-code' the white hole device was proof enough of that. "The escort fleet will be equipped with the latest in weapons technology and defensive measures. I'm given to understand that they're particularly proud of this one."
Liara projected a Hologram of a new weapons device. "An energy cannon, the Tachyon Lance." Mass Effect Fields applied to energy beams in order to produce faster than light energy attacks. As Liara understands it wasn't easy, the Salarian's had attempted to apply mass manipulating fields to energy beams for centuries before they gave up, it's only after the unfiltered data came in from the Contingencies territory that the answer presented itself: anti-gravity. Instead of trying to make the energy beams heavier or lighter the correct answer was to forcibly push the light away using anti-gravity thus making light, the fastest thing in the known galaxy, move faster. Aside from striking the target with extra force the Tachyon lances disrupt space around them as they go, doing cross testing with the council's Mass Effect Field reinforced Sillaris armour, identical to the armour peeled off of Sovereign's corpse after the battle at the citadel, not even that nightmarish strong armour could withstand space suddenly deciding to bore into it like the galaxy's most obscene drill head.
Theoretically, each ship equipped with these lances were now capable of offensive power that previously was only capable by gathering together between dozens to hundreds of ships to concentrated fire on one single target at a time similar to the case with Sovereign at the Citadel. The Sensor data from the contingency was giving more information than just potential weapons upgrades as well, the effects of dark matter was allowing the Contingency ships to move extremely fast, fast like the Reaper's, pushing against the folds in space time, similar technology applied to shielding theoretically kept weapons attacks of all kinds far, far away. Joint Union/Council ships were now able to theoretically fight the Reaper's 1v1, provided that they can keep their ships from being torn apart by multiple conflicting Mass Effect Fields, because so far they have one pushing it forwards, one shooting from the front, and one that is simultaneously supposed to hold the ship together and push everything that gets close to it away.
The key lies in hyper precise psi-manipulation in tandem with the mass effect fields, which is ultimately very expensive and time consuming to manufacture. So for now they needed advanced intelligence on the contingency, and to sabotage them to the point where they had the time to get this new advance technology up and running, and hopefully gain a idea of what the contingency was capable of. Snatching their technology to reverse engineer would be out of the question though: the risk of the contingencies programming expanding like a virus was too high. It would take months worth of fine tuning to create a ship that could survive not only the strain of it's own advance technology but more importantly for the immediate future, dealing with the Contingency would take a significant increase in personnel capable of navigating the perils of warped space in the Machines territory. To put it another way, more Unbidden.
13M 29D 21H Until the Colossus Fires
Tevos was revelling in the chance to be useful again! She was right now on a joint Tebrid/Salarian research station that had been set up to observe the rift in space that was left over where the Collectors station had been. Liara had laid down the ground work for the research to be conducted on the station, now would be the time where they got to prove the fruits of their labours.
"This is your so-called Rift Sphere?" Tevos looked at the large metal ball shaped ship that was attached to a cable.
"We've stress tested hundreds of designs, but this, the simplest survives the rigours of unreality." What the Salarian was talking about was a huge black sphere, it wasn't made of neutron matter, less it became too heavy to retrieve, but it was still very durable and it had a completely friction-less surface. Rather than folding space, as is the case when ships are forced to travel at near Light speeds, the space inside of the rift twists and turns around objects, when that surface is longer than wide or wider than long room is given to twist in different directions, the smooth friction-less surface of the sphere gives a little room to grab on as possible, it wasn't enough to protect from the Contingencies spatial distortions but it would work on the ones inside of the rift. "The spatial waves wash off the rounded surface quite nicely. Though sadly that is not the extent of our problems at the moment."
The Salarian gestured over to a nearby console where footage was playing out. Tevos was grateful that the footage in question was muted, a Salarian had been strapped down to a medical table, his mouth was wide open as he constantly screamed.
"Should I assume he was inside of the sphere when you chucked into the... Astral Rift is what you called it?"
"Correct. Digital files insufficient for information storage." As the Salarian talked he brought up the transcript from the screaming man's report, while he was still speaking coherently that is. "'Reality is broken. Time and Space has been revealed to be what they always were: the artificial constructs of dying sparks trying to make sense of the cosmos. Cause and Effect has been sundered replaced by the screams of alien wills.'" The Salarian looked up to Tevos who indicated for him to continue. "'Our sensor Data appears and disappears in between moments and centuries, written and unwritten at the whims of mad gods. In one moment I feel the ache of eternity as my body is eaten from the inside out, rotted way to nothing and yet kept alive by powers beyond my knowledge, in others I feel as a newborn hatched fresh fresh from my egg on Sur'kesh. This accursed sphere is my egg, my prison, my tomb and my world all in one. It is all I know and all that I can remember and I fear I may never be able to leave it.'" Faced with a set up like that, it's no wonder the only thing that he was capable of this time was screaming. "'Through the observation viewer I see the death and birth of the universe, the burning of those who came before, of my own people and those who have yet to come.'" Oh yeah that's promising.
"Perhaps it would be better to skip to the observations that you can pick through the testimony. Or perhaps the data from the sphere?" Tevos was not liking anything about these observations that this mad Salarian had made, madder than usual that is.
"Simple terms? Time does not flow correctly. It moves at a vastly different rate in comparison to our own and in both directions forwards and backwards. Observe." The Salarian brought up the sensor log for the Sphere. "For the amount of time that doctor Enston appears to have spent in that place there is almost zero sensor data, near as we can tell the data hasn't been erased either, at least not in any manner that we can recover it. If we follow the testimony of Doctor Enston, the information recording devices were continuously forced back and forth through time along with the storage devices meant to record them." Well that was good to know.
"So now that you're aware of your design flaws I hope you have plans in place to correct them?" Tevos more ordered than asked, but she knew the with the Salarian's devious little minds they would come up with something, or failing that the Tebrid's endless stress testing would find a solution to this mess but she'd preferred that the solution came from the Council.
"For now, the Sphere is unmanned. All the sensor data will be fed through to us using a new cable." Previously they had prioritised the cable's durability first and foremost, now they would have to give it the secondary function of feeding data from the sensors. "Aside from that, the internal control unit of the device will be composed of organic Prothean styled computer units." Dr. Enston was insane but he was still able to remember everything he had went through, an organic mind was perfectly capable of retaining information in that space, even if the mind may try to block out the experiences from the trauma. For now, they had their way forward through the Astral Rifts.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: They're older than the forces of nature. Mass Effect's physics is messy enough without it.
Monster King: I plan to.
Coment9: Thank you.
2hupedia: I can respect that. Technically speaking it was Union Tech they stole.
Skyegrave: Thank you for saying so.
Fireguy189: He's even posting glowing employee reviews.