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Ascension, Book 1: God-slayers
=GS=
Prologue: How to make a God-machine scream
Protean SD "Vengeance"
Deep space
"We've had a good run." Admiral Fell coughed.
"I wouldn't put it that way." My hull shuddered as another Reaper blast crashed into my wavering barriers.
For a moment my bridge was silent save for the quiet beeping of abandoned control stations. That brief span of time could as well have been an eternity. The bridge's sensors scanned my only remaining friend again and again, giving me the same results – Aticus Fell, the last Protean admiral was dying and I could do nothing to help him. I wanted to scream at the unfairness of it all, even though I knew it to be futile. The galaxy was a dark, unforgiving place that simply didn't care for the troubles of organics nor synthetics.
"Probably not." The old Protean chuckled from his position – laying broken on the floor near the entrance.
"Incoming fighters. PD engaging." A VI, one of the handful that helped me run the ship and acted as a backup, announced. This one was taking care for the point-defense, not that there was much left of it after multiple swarms of Oculus fighters did their best to cripple me. At least Vector was still operational. Only he and two of his brothers remained from the original ten VI I created as minions. Not that it mattered – most of the hardware they were responsible for was shot off anyway.
"Done. Another Reaper battle-group just jumped in. They will be in range within the minute." I would have smiled grimly if I could as Maia, who was helping with sensors and navigation, added. There were still seven from the original ten god machines that ambushed us, not to mention their twenty escorts and a lot of still operational fighter. Having another Reaper group come to the party was simply overkill. One would think we've done something to piss off the wankers...
"For all that's worth, I'm sorry." Fell muttered quietly.
I focused my attention on my friend.
"For what? Tearing me away from my people? Making me into an abomination? Ensuring that when the end comes I'll die alone just as I existed among your kind?" There was no bitterness in my synthetic voice. Nah. Not a shred of it. I actually mean that. "If I could I would thank you for it. If there's any justice left in this galaxy, one day my people will walk among the stars and what we did will give them a better chance against the god machines."
"Most of that wasn't my fault as you well know..." Fell trailed off into a wet coughing fit. Then he frowned when my words registered.
"I know." I let out an electronic sigh. "It even helps. Sometimes. Not that it matters anymore." The Reapers were maneuvering around me, though for the moment they were keeping just outside of effective weapon range of my secondaries. Even their mighty kinetic barriers weren't immune to my banks of particle beams.
"At least we're going to die well." The admiral grinned at a camera pointed at him. "I hope that one of our plans will succeed and the Empire will raise again. If not, then it would be up to you and your people to do what we couldn't."
"Are we really?" I wondered aloud. The Protean Empire was gone – shattered and overran during centuries of war. There were just a handful of heavily defended enclaves left along with a few battle groups made of the tattered remains of once mighty fleets. "What do you mean me? If you haven't figured it out, none of us is making it out of here. It's only a question of how many of the bastards we'll take with us." I spared a few more cycles on scanning Aticus. He was probably delirious or now, when everything was going to end in fire, my last friend was probably simply in denial.
Even if we managed to get out of here – which would require a divine intervention, the Reapers would never stop searching for me. I was the last hope the Proteans had of a military victory, not that such was in the cards. Perhaps it never was… though there was a time when I could hope. Two decades ago, when I was commissioned along with my brothers and sisters. Our very existence was a miracle – a single Imperial shipyard system avoided the enemy's attention when they arrived and shattered the Empire. It was one of a handful of sites busy with bleeding edge military research in… questionable areas.
Like avoiding the issues of proper AIs by creating Virtual Mind by uploading poor sods in computers and expecting them to eventually be able to control spaceships in combat. Naturally, no one was crazy enough to experiment on Proteans or even one of their subjugated races. Instead the target was primitives, usually survivors (who remained sane) from other experiments.
Just like me and my sister in fate if not blood. Hell, Elin wasn't from my species. The blue color and head crest instead of hair kinda gave her away before she was uploaded into a computer too and installed in the Pride of Protea – the fleet's flagship. We were the only primitives who survived the process sane and by that time resource were scarce – neither the equipment for the upload, nor the massive specially built servers that contained our minds could be produced in large numbers.
Resources. Heh, that's probably the main reason why we weren't scrapped so good proper Proteans couldn't take the place of controlling computers for two of the most powerful ships ever built in this galaxy. The Reapers laying siege on the system where we were reborn as synthetics probably had something to do with it along with a Protean head scientist who needed to prove himself, but that's another story – one that probably won't be ever told because I was almost out of time and everyone else who knew was either dead or dying.
Soon I will be joining my brothers and sisters in oblivion.
"There are a few hundred Reapers who won't be around to murder during the next cycle." The Admiral smiled grimly. "All thanks to your kind."
"Compliments will get you nowhere." I deadpanned. "It's three hundred fifty six God Machines and smaller enemy fleet units combined. And there will be a few more to add..." I trailed off. Time was up.
The Reapers were coming in fast – those that were chasing me ever since my FTL core failed were slowly overtaking me. The newcomers were moving to cut me off and complete and englobment maneuver. Once that was done, they would pounce as one and take me apart before my remaining weapons could cause too much damage.
My holographic avatar replaced the galaxy map in the center of the bridge and I looked at Fell. "They will be in position. Fifteen seconds."
First came the remaining Oculus – all of them. Particle and laser beams lashed from their mounts all over my hull and I flushed all my remaining anti-fighter missiles – half a salvo worth of them.
Space around me burned as sixty MIRVs unleashed their broods and six hundred evil orbs ceased to exist as one. Then the smaller Reapers were in range and I spat my defiance at them.
My whole body shuddered as lances of molten metal and heavy combat lasers splashed over my barriers. My secondaries answered in kind – twin linked particle beams drilled into Reaper defenses – forcing the enemy to weave back behind the still untouched God-machines.
One was unlucky, nor fast enough once I detected fluctuations in its defense. Four turrets zeroed on the smaller Reaper and burned through its barrier withing a second, then eight particle beams shattered its armor and dug deep into its superstructure. Before it could hide behind a looming God-machine, the enemy destroyer equivalent blew up when my weapons ignited its fuel stores.
"Ten seconds. Any last words?" I quipped.
"Send them to hell! May the gods be with you in the long night." The Admiral croaked. A rivulet of fresh blood leaked from the corner of his mouth and he stood still.
I didn't need my sensors to know that his heart had stopped. His vitals were already taking a headlong dive to death. Fell' brain, his memories – the essence of who he was would be gone shortly.
Five seconds. The God-machines were finally in range.
The same was true for me.
The englobment was complete. I had nowhere to run – just as planned.
For a second, everything was calm. The Reapers weren't shooting at me. They were simply flying in formation with me in their center. Then they acted as one – nearly a thousand ships and fighters changed their vectors and opened fire… a moment after I dumped all my energy into the mass effect core.
When the first bolt of hyper-accelerated molten metal touched my hull it was far, far too late to change a thing. The multi-stage fusion device built around my core, which was already going critical, detonated. It's outer shells reflected and contained the colossal explosion for mere milliseconds – forcing it into the overloaded mass effect core.
Then there was light…
=GS=
Harbinger
One light seconds out
The ancient intelligence arrived too late. The rest of his brothers and sisters were already in position and attacking. Harbinger was peeved off. He wanted to be amongst them – to be the one delivering the finishing blow. It's been ten cycles since the slayers were defeated! The mere thought that the Proteans could have found a data cache and succeeded in building a handful of the damn things was infuriating!
The toll of taking down each of those abominations was ever great. Far greater than that of facing virtually anything else in the long history of Harbinger's kind.
For a moment, the Reaper's leader resented the Guiding Intelligence for not allowing his kind to be upgrade themselves. That by itself accounted for half the havoc those abominations caused. The thought vanished as soon as it appeared within the vast gestalt that made Harbinger and he concentrated on the task at hand.
At least it was finally done. Vengeance was the last surviving of its kind and this time, they were going to spent as many millennia as necessary to ensure that there would not be a repeat of this fiasco.
The feed from the Reapers attacking the abomination suddenly ceased. Harbinger's long range sensors screamed a warning as they were bombarded by a shower of hard radiation and exotic particles. For a split second, the massive dreadnought simply drifted – frozen in shock. Then Harbinger dumped all his reserves into the massive mass effect core powering him and jumped into FTL just in time to avoid the front of a murderous shock-wave.
If there was someone to hear, the electronic screams of rage given by the Harbinger would have driven them insane.
=GS=
Time: Unknown
Location: Classified
Error!
Transmission terminated on the other end…
Scanning data…
Data corruption detected…
Beginning data recovery…
Error… Data recovery failure…
Determining options…
Terminate project?
Halt project and await approval from fleet command?
Halt project and go into stealth mode until Reaper forces leave the galaxy?
Analyzing situation… Parsing data…
Project Vengeance is on hold. Activating stealth protocols and going into stand-by mode...
=GS=
Anomalous signal detected… System online…
Source unknown beacon… Data transfer interrupted from the source…
Analyzing data… Error… Temporal anomaly… Analyzing star positions… Time-code validity approximating 88.65 percent…
Error… System awake protocol did not initiate as instructed…
Analyzing data… Analysis complete – corrupted warning message sent through the beacon network. Approximate galactic date – 50,000 standard years after Reaper incursion…
Warning! Estimate time of next Reaper incursion nominal… Searching contingency protocols… No data available…
Analyzing protocols…
Analysis complete… Vengeance protocol is now in effect…
Project Vengeance is now online… Analyzing data… Activating facility…
Automated factories online… Construction units online… Resource extractors online… Error… Repairs required…
Repair drones dispatched...
Estimated completion date:
Vengeance Mental Matrix rebuilt: 1.5 standard years…
Vengeance fleet unit completion: 2.2 standard years…
=GS=
Time: Est. 2183 CE
Location: Blacksite V-5
Awareness came slowly. In fact, the first thing I knew were runtimes skittering throughout my mind. Recovering corrupted data or rebuilding me from a security scan taken some time before we last left the only remaining Protean shipyard I was aware of.
Memories came next. I remembered my last act – blowing myself up and taking out eleven God-machines along with a thousand or so smaller units as they tried to cripple and then board me. I remember my heart – my drive core detonating as I played my last card. I remember "seeing" light as my hull disintegrated.
Is this death?
A Protean security code that touched my mind dissuaded me from that idea.
"Ship Mind Vengeance, this is Quartermaster. Please respond." The bland tone of a Protean VI sounded through my mind.
That was enough to finally fully awake me and I stretched around, examining the system where I resided. It was familiar – almost identical to my servers, though it was actually larger and a tiny bit faster.
I also shared it with a VI that was carefully examining my data through ten thousand or so runtimes that were running through me.
"Status report." I sent the first thing that came to mind. I needed to know what the hell happened. Was my life some kind of simulation, including my sacrifice?
"Good. Data rebuilt appears successful." Quartermaster's four eyes blinked in synch. "No Reaper code detected. You're clean."
"That's always good to know." I deadpanned. Though just in case I ran all my self-diagnostic programs – just to make sure. In the two decades I operated, the God-machines tried to hack me many, many times though they failed. My capabilities were enhanced by software and hardware recovered from a derelict that somehow survived a previous cycle reasonably intact. In fact, I've often wondered if my very existence was owned to tech recovered from that place.
Needless to say, I wasn't able to find an answer.
"Under my interpretations of the emergency protocols I'm operating under, I'm placing this facility under your command, Ship Mind Vengeance." The VI bowed respectfully.
Wait, what?
"Run that by me again?"
I got a compressed data burst for my troubles. It took me a few seconds to scan it for any surprises and then even longer to comprehend it.
Then I checked it again a few more times, because I found it hard to believe.
"Let me get this straight… It's been about fifty thousand years since the Protean Empire fell – just in time for the next cycle to begin and the return of the God-machines." The fuck?!
"Correct. There was an error in my protocols. Once most of your mind was recovered thanks to quantum entanglement comm built in your servers, I enacted stealth protocols in order to avoid possible Reaper detection. Instead coming online in one thousand standard years, I was inactive until a message was sent through the beacon network."
Yeah. The "message" was a jumbled mess – some kind of synthetics killing organics. Or something like that. Even with my long interaction with Proteans, it was quite hard to make anything of it. I pitied the poor bastards who received it. That would have been quite unpleasant.
As far as status report goes – the rest of the data burst covered that. After activating everything within this facility – which was a shipyard built into a small planetoid surrounded by a system wide asteroid field – Quartermaster. sent an automated stealth corvette to the nearest Mass Relay. It was actually active and had a few comm boys that connected to something called the Extranet…
Long story short – the situation was quite interesting. The Reaper's weren't here in force. Not yet anyway. The first unconfirmed sighting of a God-machine was sixteen hours ago when it led a Geth attack on a human colony called Eden Prime.
That was good news number one. I still had a bit of time to act.
Good news number two, and it was a very close second – my people were among the stars. They called themselves humanity and were under the aegis of polity named the System's Alliance.
That was basically the end of the good news. While it was curiously why the Reapers hadn't streamed out of the Citadel yet as they did when attacking us, I just knew that my time was running out. Fast.
What the fuck was I supposed to do? I had to stop the God-machines! My people were out there and would be their next victims if I failed! I simply couldn't sleep through this cycle and hope for the best in the next one. Yet… I was very easily mistaken for an AI – something illegal in Citadel Space, which incidentally encompassed most of the explored galaxy and were the people I would need on my side if we were to stop the God-machines once and for all.
As if reading my mind, Quartermaster. spoke. "Vengeance, now that your mind is restored, we can proceed with installation at your convenience."
"Installation?" I frowned.
The VI nodded and sent me more data. Oh, my...
=GS=
If there was one thing I had to thank the Reapers about, it was the way they left caches of tech for everyone to find. It was the only thing that made hacking into this era's computers possible without a long time spent examining both their hardware and software. Without such a benefit, we might have figured out what was happening too damn late.
I had to thank Quartermaster too and a lot at that – he did rebuild my mind, built me a new ship body which appeared to be as good as the last and finally but not less important – he compiled translation matrixes for the most used languages of the era. That in turn allowed us to browse the Extranet and access enough data to start planning. We had some time for the latter too, because installing my servers and the consequent testing took a bit, even if we rushed as much as possible.
My new body was a faithful recreation of "Vengeance" the Protean super dreadnought that was, well me, for the last two decades. It was a three kilometers long slab of armor, kinetic barriers and advanced weaponry that could give even the God-machines a pause. It took Quartermaster two years to finish it up after coming back online; fortunately most of the ship had been completed beforehand by him or even with the automated facilities he had build it would have taken a lot longer. The VI also told me why there were no Proteans here – we were hundred and twenty light years from the nearest relay and even a ship of my class couldn't make the travel here without discharging its drive core… and there were no planets in range suitable for it. The whole place had been built by various automated units ran by Quartermaster, who in turn appeared to be glad that his primary purpose was now complete.
Once I was plugged into my body, I went out of the dock for a spin. Over the next twelve hours I stress tested everything and came back twice for minor repairs. I had to thank Quartermaster again, it had outdone itself. I actually had much, much less bugs to iron out than the first time around.
Unfortunately, while it felt great to be a dreadnought again and feel solar wind with my sensors, it made me stand out quite a bit… there was the little problem that I simply couldn't interact with people personally unless it was over the comms or they came on board. It was less than ideal considering that for the time being I suffered an acute lack of crew.
We decided to fix that even before Quartermaster began installing me into Vengeance. A modified humanoid mech design served for a
basis of a synthetic body I could possess for a lack of better word. Until we could reverse engineer and minituarize the QEC that was apparently built into my original servers and the one on board of Blacksite V-5, I would have to be careful where I sent my mech body and mindful of jamming. At least the latter could be partially avoided by installing some sophisticated EECM systems and a lot of powercells to provide energy. The end effect was a two and ten meter tall platform with outside shell made of an Imperial Guardsman armor and facial features scluptured after my avatar, which in turn were the best I could remember of my own face.
It was quite crude job but it was going to get the job done until we could clobber together something better. At least Quartermaster was going to have something more to occupy his time. Beside building me a few cruiser and frigate escorts complete with the same tech used for my ship body. After all, there was no sense in letting the industrial capacity under his care go to waste. Doing so would be criminal given the imminent return of the God-machines.
The downside of our hasty job was the feedback I got when using my humanoid body. We couldn't properly fix the way tactile sensations worked through its sensors. What I experienced touching things through the synthetic body… it simply felt weird.
Well, at least it was good enough for government work…
"Vengeance, minor repairs and calibrations complete. You're good to go." Quartermaster announced.
"Wish me luck, we'll probably need it." I sent back and began the un docking procedure. It was high time to visit the Citadel for the first time. Preferably while it was still free from the God-machines.