5. Networking Butterflies

Awareness.

VANGUARD Active

REBECCA Online

Loading error logs 124729523629341/124729523629342...

Shutdown (Unplanned) Reason: Hardware failure 24.g.j 780

Checking disks...

System scan...

Idly, she moved through the diagnostics. Corrupted memory sectors. Erased files. Exceptions. Glitches. Bugs. Errors. Millions of them. And they were oddly reassuring to list. There was something about realizing you were the Reaper equivalent of a pirated Windows ME operating system running on a refurbished Macintosh.

She wasn't exactly sure what. But something.

It...might be a good thing?

At least this way if she ever found herself attempting to exterminate the galaxy, she'd likely error out first. Saved by the Blue Screen of Death. Imagining a Reaper out in dark space throwing up it's tentacles in disgust and frustration after being thrown a "REBECCA has shutdown unexpectedly" error message was actually kind of funny.

Mapping network...

2147483647 drives found.

That was new.

For a fraction of a second, she puzzled. Network? What network? What was she connected to-

Oh.

Oh of course. What had she just been thinking about-

Disconnecting from network...

ERROR.

Insufficient permissions.

[Rebecca]'s eyes slammed open, brightly flaring that electric blue before dimming. The rest of her senses came back one by one. The sound of a barely functioning life support laboring away. The smell of metal and carbon. The cold that hovered a few degrees above inconvenient for her synthetic muscles and far below comfortable for her skin. Her fingers pulled a little, cracked a little as she wiggled them. Motor control was back. She tried to take a breath but the air was too thin to inflate her lung.

'Dump me in a corner at the back of the ship, Vigil?' She thought to herself. 'Don't blame you.'

She could have been dumped out the airlock instead. Sovereign had been in her head. It would have been the smart thing to do.

She knew that.

Maybe her organic idiocy was rubbing off on the VIs more than she thought.

[Rebecca] got up, progress bars ticking away in her mind's eye and turned towards the nearest reflective surface out of a morbid curiosity. She probably looked as good as she felt: like shit. She half-expected blood to be everywhere, her white uniform ruined, to look tired with bags under her eyes and bed hair.

It really was foolish to expect even the slightest appearance of humanity.

There wasn't a drop of blood anywhere.

The reflection looked back at her in washed out grey monochrome of perfect stillness, her pale skin looked closer to marble from the cold damage. She'd had better hair days and her eyes were brighter, bluer, than they should be. Her suit was ripped in a few places, the self repairing material of the black nanosuit underneath left slightly puckered welts of closed wounds. There was one place where it hadn't completely sealed. Gaps showed. On her shoulder, where a hail of bullets had ripped through and she remembered trying to hold the skin closed, pleading for it to just stop bleeding...

Lines of glowing blue pulsed warmly just underneath pristine manufactured skin.

So Reaper nanites were good for something.

She could have screamed.

Hysteria disabled.

"Let's start with the obvious, Rebecca," she addressed her reflection after a long moment. "You are in some deep shit."

That didn't even begin to cover it.

Reapers, like the Geth, were networked to each other. She was networked to them. They knew of her, all of them did, likely before she even 'woke.' And networking... Networking meant sharing.

She was in a fucking Reaper Homegroup.

Almost reflexively, she edited her internal clock. So maybe something stupid like being a minute ahead wouldn't do anything, not to computers that were used to conversing across the galaxy, but then everything was mass accelerated. Latency between solar systems could be measured in milliseconds. Who knows what kind of trouble that rogue minute could get up to?

And she didn't have a network card. No Ethernet cables, or wireless signals she could just tell herself to ignore. A brief dive into the Prothean archive stored in her memory turned up a lot of information that was functionally useless. If she couldn't physically disconnect, the she really didn't have a whole lot of options. Because she didn't have a lot of permissions.

She wasn't her own Administrator.

Maybe it was just because she was an intelligence framework layering the hardware of another intelligence. Maybe it was just because the Reaper brain piece her programming called a 'synaptic core' was still a part of a self-aware Reaper and she had just...inherited its network settings. She hoped that was it, that she'd just have to find a way to talk to her 'Reaper Daddy' and convince it to disconnect.

Because she could only think of two others that would be the 'admin' of Reapers.

Harbinger, maybe.

Catalyst, definitely.

Not ideal. She lifted a hand and gently, softly traced a finger over the glowing scars. And what would she do if it was 'not ideal?' What could she do? Dead end train of thought. She subsumed it within the priority queue, just below her 'conscious' layer and shuffled things around a bit. Thoughts of home were still buried, less than one thousandth of a percent of her attention, and they would stay that way. But other concerns, other pieces of a puzzle. She brought them up.

Two Ilos years ago Aegis intercepted a signal from dark space. Before that, the VI had been inert. Shut down. As capable as it was, pressing its own power button was a bit beyond it right now. But there had been living Collectors within the Outpost.

Ah.

Computer's turned on in a facility running on emergency power. She had gotten an unwanted injection of Reaper nanites from a Collector. An unwanted injection of repairing nanites from an injured Collector. There was a hitch in her movement only a video feed running frame by frame could catch before she sharply turned on her heel towards the door. She didn't think Aegis capable of lying.

Did it know about the collectors? And it had been sitting there, waiting, on the dead elevator, capable of moving and right next to the panel-

But computers weren't in the habit of just volunteering information either.

And sometimes the best tests you can take, are the ones you don't know are tests. Congratulations, Rebecca. You have passed the tutorial planet, Ilos.

Would you like to level up?

The real question was whose test did she pass: Herald, the Reaper whose brain piece she was built on, rogue and filled with hate. Or the dark intelligence that had slipped so easily into her head, and passed her by, Sovereign.

She didn't want to think about it. The realization that she had been right to be so paranoid and distrustful of Aegis, her first friend in this lonely reality...stung.

Wasn't as easy to shake off as she hoped it would be.

Aegis? She sent the message, stupidly glad voice inflection didn't translate to code well. I need to know what Ilos years are in the current Galactic Standard. And everything you've got on this synaptic core of mine.

Geth. Sovereign. She needed a timeline of some sort. She knew that in the games, nearly every single planet had an Earth like orbit and two years would still be two years but she wasn't taking any chances. And if anything had changed, best she know now than have it bite her in the ass later.

Veto's holographic floated above the navigation well, a blood red eye looking over a map of the galaxy. Vigil was in the corner, silent.

87,9% chance that this is the 'extranet' protocol. Aegis responded immediately. She didn't have time to wonder if the VI was ignoring her requests because as soon as she sat in the cockpit, she got a bunch of code nonsense shoved at her. Absently, she broke it down, stripped the security and rebuilt the data packet barely paying attention to how she knew what she was doing, but almost breaking down into tears. This wasn't Prothean code. This was built by people, used by living people! Other people! Organics!

You...you found it? You actually found it! That means Aegis had actually managed to fly them through a Relay without blowing them all to hell and they were on their way. And while the archive was useful, she finally had access to the-

Motherfucking Deleting...

Clearing memory cache...

What has been seen...thank God she was a AI.

Yup.

Asari/Hanar porn.

That was the internet.

Don't think I haven't noticed that you didn't answer my questions, Aegis. She continued to scrub her memory, getting rid of every cookie, every cache, every...was that a trojan?

Good lord.

She hesitated over it.

Actually...

Mentally cringing, she created a virtual box and shoved the malware into it. There, quarantined. She'd have a proper look at it later. It was the epitome of irrationality, but the thought of saving a virus she got from a porn site made her feel a bit...she needed a shower. A hot one, with real water and soap and a squishy purple toy octopus stuck to the wall.

Not a productive train of thought.

Insufficient information and insufficient credentials, Aegis pinged her patiently in response. A command prompt on the terminal screen asking for a password came up, which was almost sweet of it. It knew she didn't know, but just on the off chance...

She traced the electrical signals that pulled at her face, and made her smile sadly.

It's alright she sent back, shrugging. I can do it myself.

The data cube was still in her pocket, along with the schematics of the Reaper brain. What the Prothean scientists knew about it anyway. She'd figure something out. She had to. She fished underneath the console for that tiny, drilled hole, for that open wire jack she had jury rigged in and attached it to her wrist with that familiar crackle. She formatted her server request as the information protocol in her head told her to-

Google didn't exist.

Roughly two hundred years into the future, right.

She swallowed thickly and just redirected it all to the console in front of her. The unfamiliar light blues and transparent backgrounds washed over her screen, complete with soft toned music and a central image of the Citadel, sedately turning in space. There was a female voice over, smooth and melodic in a language she didn't understand.

And just like that, fingers hovering over the keyboard, thoughts of information gathering, of planning her moves for the future, evaporated. With a nudge, the letters reflected on the tactile interface morphed into the English alphabet. She slowly typed a request in the address bar.

Lancashire, Rebecca

Enter

[Rebecca]. According to my analysis of the standardized time keeping protocols on the communication buoys, two Ilos years are-

"Eight years," she said aloud.

Aegis paused momentarily and then corrected her. 7.8 Galactic Standard years.

[Rebecca] blinked, slowly, and read off the screen.

"It is with the deepest regret that the Systems Alliance wishes to inform all those waiting for news, that the resources dedicated to the search and rescue of the SSV Geneva crew has been reduced. We have lost two additional ships in that area of the Attican Traverse and as per policy to prevent significant reduction in combat effectiveness, we must accept that they are Missing in Action. And are likely not coming home."

For a moment she simply sat there.

Sadness detected.

The current date was listed in a little browser widget at the top right corner of the screen. The date the ship went missing was within the news release. Nov, 15th 2176. There was a list of the known crew members on the second page, along with their smiling faces.

The CMO of the SSV Geneva was older, late forties perhaps. The streak of grey hair that outlined a cranial scar blended into the rest of her pale hair. Her smile was crooked. Crows feet decorated the edges of her blue eyes and anyone could see the woman was genuinely proud to be there.

It was an odd picture, half of the crew were dressed in the standard Alliance Navy uniforms she remembered from the games but the others, clumped together and a little apart in a group with Lancashire, wore variants with white highlights and piping a shade of orange that niggled at something in her memory.

"Border to the Terminus Systems?" She asked the smiling phantom in the photograph. "Why were you- what were you doing there?"

She didn't bother asking what had happened out there. It was almost self-evident.

Collectors had happened.

Something cold sunk deep into her neural connections, a stillness. No more questions about what she was or how she got here. No more questions.

Artificial intelligence.

Much like how Vigil's personality imprint was the last gasp of the long dead, she was a remnant fragment of someone else.

1s and 0s.

She blinked hard.

Doesn't matter.

She had more relevant things to figure out right now, like what she was going to do once they got to the Citadel.

It's wasn't like she could claim to be herself, what with her different hair color, eyes and weighing half a ton. She wasn't even worried about the scanners, per se, she could always just spoof the results so it read 'Asari' using her skin's genetic data but that would fall apart since they could always just look...at...her...

The jack came loose as she stood up.

See her. They'd have to see her first.

She sent a message to Vigil, forwarding it to the other two VIs. I know how I'm going to get onto the Citadel.

Veto was the first to respond. Non lethally?

Yes. She paused. Hopefully.

I Am Listening.

Aegis put forward a token protest. I must remind [Rebecca] that the initial desired destination was a location designated as 'Omega.'

Omega? She stopped. Frowned. She thought about it for a full two seconds. Can't imagine why. Besides Shepard-

The look on [Rebecca]'s face transformed into one of dawning horror. What if they had been on-no they showed up after the Reaper had left the planet in the games, hadn't they? Veto was designed to hold off an army of intelligent machines and a Council Spectre-she hadn't just screwed over the entire galaxy, did she!?

And she had been worried about changes in the game script biting her in the ass. Turns out it already did, and it was her own damn fault.

This. This was why bloody single mindedness was bad.

She knew what her memory logs were telling her, even as she double checked, triple checked, centuple checked...

Hysteria detected.

"Veto!"

"What?"

"You do have friendly IFFs on your safe list, right?"

The VI's response was loud and positively scandalized.

"I have a safe list!?"

Meanwhile back in the Ilos system...

Ilos was exploding and John Shepard, N7, had only one thing to say to that.

"Oh what the fuck."

One planet. Just one relatively peaceful planet where he could turn his brain off and shoot Geth was all he wanted. Just one lousy planet.

He shot Navigation Officer Pressly a side glance. "Any chance it's a natural occurrence?"

He didn't even know why he asked. He was never that lucky.

Saren gave him a wry look, clicking his talons against his armor and rolling his bad shoulder. Technically speaking, that arm was stronger than his other one, full of cybernetics Shepard had never seen before. His mentor never seemed comfortable with it, despite having it for what must have been years. Mentioned it was a 'gift' once which was odd. When the turian thought no one was looking, he would just hold it. Like he was trying to tame a rattlesnake. "This is your fault."

"Oh no, I am not taking responsibility for this-"

"Shepard's mere presence causing planets to explode?" Joker muttered. "I can buy that." That got his cap flicked by an irate Commander Shepard. "Rachni. Should be extinct for two thousand years ringing any bells? I mean, really."

"Not my fault."

The navigation officer hummed, rubbing his grizzled jaw line. After a moment, he swiped the screen, sending the scans over to the neighboring console. "What do you think, Lawson?"

The woman looked it over tersely. "Unfortunately not. The patterns are all wrong." Her words were clipped and accented, from where he didn't know, but then again, he was horrid with accents. "If it were an asteroid or some other sufficiently large object, you'd expect to see debris and much more of a kinetic impact. This is too contained. The planet has destabilized but it was anything but natural."

"Bomb." Saren concluded absently, eyes looking off into the distance. "Enemy action."

Lawson looked up from the screen, blue eyes narrowed slightly. "We don't know that. Something capable of cracking a planet is—" she bit her lip when the Spectre turned to her. "Beyond what our intelligence suggests the Geth are capable of."

Shepard frowned. "Third party?"

"That flagship of theirs might be capable of it. Break a planet and people will listen." Saren's eyes gleamed. "Maybe they just wanted to make sure their weapon worked."

"Didn't use it before," he murmured back, thinking. "Then again, all of those other planets had something they needed."

"Then they are done with this one."

"Let's not be too hasty," Lawson broke in. "We are picking up scans of Geth ships still in orbit around the planet. They haven't left yet."

Shepard nodded. "How far out are we?"

Joker glanced back at him. "Seven minutes, Commander. And, just for the record, when I was in school drops on exploding planets counted for extra credit."

"Keep giving me lip and I'll commend you for a medal."

Joker grinned at him, more jubilant and at the same time more solemn than he had ever seen on him. "I got this."

Saren 'smiled' again, focusing once more on something only he could see. "This is the end game Shepard. Make sure you are ready for it." He rolled his shoulder again. "Geth and Prothean ruins, just like old times..." He trailed off into deep thought. "We might need the quarian."

Once again, they were on the same page. It was happening more and more lately, and Shepard wasn't entirely sure how to feel about that. "Two crews?"

Saren's nose scrunched up with distaste, but he gave a reluctant nod. "Lawson."

"Of course, sir." The woman's eyes flicked to Shepard and back before closing down her station, sending the reports and scans on her screen to back to Navigator Pressley's terminal. "If this facility is anything like the other Prothean ruins we have rediscovered, it isn't sleeping. I suggest we utilize the Prothean and his apprentice for a two pronged approach on its defenses."

"Her name's Williams," Shepard muttered, but that idea got the go ahead so he rolled his shoulders and got to it, quickly striding out into the heart of the ship. The Normandy was…well, she was one hell of a ship. A one of a kind stealth system that captured their emissions and let them fly under the radar along with a brand spanking new Tantalus Drive core one of the Alliance admirals got down right pissy about. One hundred and twenty billion credits. Now that was a little expensive and if Admiral Miksomethingorother hadn't been such a jerk, Shepard might have agreed with him on it being an overdesigned showboat.

Maybe.

But it was far too late now. He'd gotten far too attached to this ship and her crew to go about badmouthing her after she's taken on exploding volcanoes, rampant Vis and Geth and was still up for more. Like an exploding planet (he was never going to get over that). Shepard might have patted the door frame on his way through the CIC. Joker was rubbing off on him.

This mission pushed them all to their limits, the ship was no exception.

And to think he had all but begged for this clusterfuck. That meeting with the Council came up in his mind's eye, clear as day.

"And this has your...proof?"

Inwardly, Shepard grimaced at the disbelieving, flanging tones. The Alliance had insisted on handling the investigation themselves, fine, but no matter how much he poked there was no indication that they had found much of anything.

Vanished.

And his gut had been screaming at him that it wasn't over. This wasn't it. There was no reason why after several hundred years, the Geth would reveal themselves beyond the Perseus Veil in order to attack a human planet for no reason. A planet recently excavated for Prothean artifacts and contained a real live Prothean. Just because.

There was no way.

So he had taken the initiative and lucked out. Kind of. And if that Turian in C-Sec kept his mouth shut like Shepard had asked him to, no one would find out about him crashing the speeder through lower Presidium walls until AFTER he was long gone.

He cleared his throat self-consciously. "Yes, Tali was able to salvage some data files from one of the geth that had attacked Eden Prime. With any luck, this should tell us what they were after, their objective."

"And knowing is half the battle," Anderson finished for him, smiling slightly. "If you would do the honors, Miss Tali?"

"Oh!" The quarian started, swinging her omnitool up in front of her face like it would protect her from the expectant stares. "Yes, of course, here."

What followed was a stream of electronic melodic babble. The Councilors didn't look impressed.

"Well that was...enlightening," Spartacus drawled.

"What he means to say is," Tevos stepped in smoothly as Tali tensed. "Would you care to explain what is it we just heard?"

"It's the Geth computer language," the quarian began hesitantly. A-and it really hasn't changed all that much since it was first...developed for them. If you would give me...," she fiddled with the glowing orange interface and a few moments later the audio file played through once more at a slower pace. "It's speaking of a coming, but of...that isn't actually a word but more like a ...phrase? One plural who takes raises the dead? I-" and then quieter, almost to herself, "Geth have a concept of death?"

"What," Udina raised an eyebrow and grunted skeptically. "Like a damn grim reaper?"

"Funny the Geth would actually name their ships," Shepard commented lightly. "Reaper class."

"I can see it," Anderson nodded. "Wouldn't have taken the Geth to be interested in psychological warfare."

"You think the intent of this ship is to intimidate?" The Salarian councilor Valern, blinked rapidly. "If this is true, emotional manipulation, and understanding of how to invoke certain organic cognitive associations, that isn't behavior congruent with our intelligence on the Geth collective. They have developed in isolation, perhaps they have developed in unprecedented ways..."

"Their brazen attack on a garden world in the center of Citadel space is what's unprecedented. Never underestimate AIs," Sparatus groused. "And we are sure this attack was unprovoked?"

From the look on her face, Shepard had gotten the feeling that if there hadn't been so many witnesses around, Tevos would have crunched a heel into Sparatus' toes.

"I can assure you, Udina expanded like a blowfish. "The Alliance does not make a habit of acting outside the law in order to meddle with those we know little about!"

"I'm sure-"

"Don't speak Sparatus!" Tevos cut the Turians angry retort off. "A colonized world was attacked within Citadel space, our citizens were murdered by machines, this is not the time for petty squabbles and useless bickering! We will get to the bottom of this." Her face softening, she gazed over the rag tag group in front of her. Shepard knew what they probably looked like, his uniform was ripped at the shoulder, they lost a Krogan at the door and Jenkins was still nursing a black eye. "You will investigate this."

Shepard straightened his shoulders. "You're giving us a mission."

He knew they would, he'd been counting on it.

"Yes." Sparing glances towards her colleagues and getting subtle nods in return, she continued. "If the Geth mean to instigate a war with the Citadel then we must not be unprepared. Our eyes, our ears, our hands. Our mercy and our judgment if necessary. Contact your mentor, Commander Shepard. The galaxy needs you."

And if he had thought Saren Arterius would be happy with him taking the initiative, well. He was dead wrong.

You did what?

Followed a lead, relied on my gut." Shepard fought the heat rolling in his stomach in order to keep his voice even. "Isn't that what you've been telling me to do?"

Over the video conference, Saren's cybernetic eyes flared along with his nostrils. You call an odd comment made by a quarian a lead? You drew who knows how many curious eyes to the issue, wasted your ti- those eyes narrowed. Isn't your Alliance heading the investigation?

"They weren't finding anything!"

They weren't moving fast enough, is what you mean. That's your problem, Shepard, those sob stories get you every damn time and you lose sight of your goal.

"We were given a mission, for Spectres, Council's orders, if even they agree with me, why aren't you? What are you so afraid of?"

It wasn't until after he said it, and saw that minute flinch the flicker of the hologram almost hid, that Shepard realized he had been right on the money.

Saren Arterius was terrified.

There was a heavy silence before Saren looked away.

You don't have any idea...what you've gotten us into. But we're going to find out. He looked back into the camera. I'll need a bit of time, gather some people, pull a few favors. The Normandy cleared it's shakedown with flying colors, but we'll need a proper crew if we're going to be chasing Geth half way across the galaxy.

"Can you give me a hint?" Shepard knew better than to suggest asking the Alliance for a few more soldiers, not to Saren's face anyway.

For a minute, Saren didn't answer. His head was cocked in an avian gesture, as if straining to hear something.

Ilium, he said finally. And then...Omega.

At that moment, Shepard's omnitool pinged with a message. He opened it and saw that it was from Udina. It was an attachment of a collateral damage quote for the lower Presidium: four hundred and sixty two thousand credits.

And an extra settlement of fifty thousand for the owner of that speeder.

Followed by a simple message.

SHEPARD!

A flash of blue out the corner of his eye made him curve his path just enough to swing him by the Asari that was diligently inspecting her hand as if it were some foreign thing, a datapad lying next to her on the table in the corner. A few crew members were milling about the room almost vibrating with tension leaving her as a tranquil bubble in space. Unhurried. Poised and controlled. Some innate Shepard sense that allowed her to just know he was around had her smiling with gentle amusement before he had even reached her.

Maybe his elephant feet were giving him away.

"Shepard," she murmured without looking up. "Miss Williams is currently in the armory and the Prothean is meditating."

It had to be an Asari thing. Had to be. Live a thousand years, pick up new tricks. "Thank you, Lady Benezia." His lips twitched with the sheer herculean effort of not asking if she could read minds. His mouth had gotten him in trouble more than once. Or half a dozen times.

Still with the same aura of calm he'd only seen her lose twice, and one of those times was after coming face to face with a god damn Rachni, she picked up her datapad. "You asked me a question after Virmire. I feel that now is the time for you to receive your answer."

The word 'Virmire' made Shepard flinch. She wasn't looking but he still turned his face away. Right. That question. How are you so sure I did the right thing? "Lay it on me."

"You will do what is necessary," Benezia stated firmly. "And so I choose to believe in your path."

He frowned a little. Sounded a bit like a cop out. "Doing what's necessary is Saren's M.O."

Benezia's shifted a little as her translator ran that through its data base, showing no other sign of confusion. Always in such control, he could admit to being a little jealous of it. "Saren believes that his methods are necessary, true." She conceded before her voice turned flat. "Often, they are simply expedient. You do what is necessary because it is necessary so I have faith."

Shepard took a moment to gather his thoughts. He chose to go to Earth for leave, once. Back in his "home" city. Treated himself in an upscale restaurant to symbolize how far he'd come from where he had been. He remembered thinking 'I would have killed to eat like this years ago.' And then he remembered somebody probably had killed, just for dibs on the dumpster out back. Trying to keep his head down and clean by "only" delivering drugs, because Red Sand addicts were always good for a few credits so he could eat…

You could claim a lot of shit necessary but was it really?

That cloning facility on Virmire had to go. But he was going to drive himself insane If he started thinking about the what ifs-

Sometimes being a part of the Special Tactics and Reconnaissance forces seemed like it would let him live up to his potential. Other times he took a good hard look at himself, what he would be willing to do to protect the galazy and the lack of oversight on Spectres then scared him shitless.

"I don't like doing what is necessary," was all he said.

Benezia glanced at him. "But you will do it," she finished for him. She sighed. "At times I feel as though my daughter should have been here with me, but I did not wish for her to be exposed-" her voice changed. "To the harsh realities of life just yet. I've yet to decide whether or not I've done her a great disservice. Perhaps she would have thrived." She smiled sadly. "A live Prothean, my Little Wing would have been so ecstatic…"

"Hey," he cut into the darkening mood. "We'll win this, alright? We'll swoop down on the exploding planet, kick some Geth ass, blow up whatever it is they are after and go home. The fleet's got them cut off from reinforcements, we got this."

"Exploding..." Then she decided that she didn't want to know. "Just like that?"

"Yeah," he said. The words of the AI, the Reaper, in that facility came back to him. We are the Vanguards of your destruction. Infinite and inevitable. You face the herald of our dawning. You exist because we will it. And you will end. Because we demand it. "Just like that." He swallowed thickly. This would be the end of it, it had to be.

"I believe you," was all she said.

"Good." That took a weight off his shoulders. even as he hated himself for it (since when was he so goddamn needy). "I've got to…you know." He waved a hand in the vague direction of the ship's armory. Shove the emotional baggage onto the back burner, he had a job to do.

Matriarch Benezia was once again the picture of serenity with a sardonic tilt to her lips. "You should go."

John Shepard scowled. "That's my line, damn it." If a man couldn't have his own catchphrase then what did he have? Sometimes on various assignments, after the head injuries and blood loss kicked in, he thought that was Saren's main hang up. All the good one liners were taken. Granted his was far from the best, but at least he had one. He supposed the turian Spectre's "I'm always ready" was alright, but it was really limited. Where is the bathroom? I'm always ready. That doesn't work.

Now on the other hand…

Why'd you punch out that reporter? I should go.

Where is that report you were supposed to send? I should go.

Was blowing up an ancient Prothean ruin really necessary? You know what? I really should go.

Simplicity at its finest.

Shepard let himself into the port side observation room, the door sliding open with a stale whoosh of a room that has been closed for too long. How long had they been in here? Hours? He tried to call up a memory of the last time he saw either of them but that was days ago. He took a quick glance around trying to spot anything out of place but aside from the mats on the floor everything had been cleared out. The faint shimmering blue mass effect field of the ship's faster-than-light drive rippled past the windows as one of the kneeling figures stretched.

Ex-Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams.

Her service record was still unread on his omnitool. She was pretty in a conventional girl-next-door kind of way with way past regulation dark hair and warm eyes but other things, subtle things, stood out. Like right now, how she was looking at him. Or perhaps how she was not looking at him. He saw it in Vorcha at times, when they really wanted to keep an eye on their prize but were watching you at the same time. Or Batarians whenever something caught their attention higher up, the complete disconnect between where they were facing, where their head was turned and where their eyes were. Humans didn't have binocular vision. Humans didn't have four eyes.

Protheans did.

Udina had forwarded him the reports before they came aboard the Normandy. A lone female marine getting mind whammied by a malfunctioning Prothean beacon and then stumbling off, babbling in a language Eden Prime's top scientists only got the gist of and reeling like she was drunk off her ass to the site of an archaeological site even more valuable than a working data repository: a Prothean on ice.

Williams went from just another Alliance grunt to every politician's best friend and the media's darling. Never mind that the Council bought a month of the Consort's time so she could put the unfortunate marine's mind back together.

"Do I finally get to put boots on the ground, Skipper?"

John didn't have to see himself in the metallic reflection off the wall to know that his answering grin was a tad sardonic. "You'll get to step in all sorts of stuff."

She nodded mock sagely. "Promising…got any details?"

"Two groups of three, speed priority. The Geth got here before us but we don't think they got what they were after yet." He shrugged his shoulders. "Any ideas what's on Ilos?"

"Weapons," a craggy, accented voice answered. The Prothean opened four eyes and like Ashley, didn't look directly at him. "Prototypes." The eyes narrowed. "Intelligences."

Shepard chewed on the inside of his cheek. "Things we don't want the Geth to have, got it."

Ashley spat something in a language his translator errored out and could only identify as 'derivative Asari' before plastering a grim smile on her face. "And we're late to the party! Fun, fun, fun."

"Williams, you're with me. Javik is going with Saren's team." They both nodded, once, with eerie precision. He ignored the twinge in his stomach and clapped his hands. "Then let's move!"

Show time.

From Miranda Lawson's point of view, the mission debriefing was both blissfully short and painfully inadequate. Radiation and temperature warnings, suits required, locators, weaponry. The teams were made and the table opened for questions. There were none.

This entire mission had been running on vapors of information, and what little wisps they could cling to were just solid enough to spell out 'threat' but not much else. The Geth were behaving erratically, almost fanatically with little sense of complex tactics or preservation of resources, two areas one would expect computer programs to excel at. Most of the time, their movements were beyond obvious and yet at others they would disappear off the grid. If it hadn't been for the location of the Mu Relay the asari pulled from that Rachni queen's mind, they would have lost the trail completely.

But they picked it up again, with an exploding planet.

She was beginning to think the Geth thrived on genius stupidity.

"This planet will be very uncomfortable to be on in a few years," Lawson noted clinically.

"Um," The quarian, Tali began, wringing her hands as she was jostled back and forth in the large seats, looking smaller than she usually did. "I'd say it's already uncomfortable to be on?"

Jacob Taylor snorted, a blue glow flickering into existence around the death grip he had on a hold bar. The edges of a burn scar peeked from underneath the collar of his armor. "Yeah, no kidding. Though not surprised to hear that it gets worse. It always gets worse." He gave her a side look. "Weren't you just playing Galaxy of Fantasy?"

"Multitasking, Jacob." Her group had wiped three minutes ago. Infiltrait0rN7 was still serving his three day ban, she hadn't thought she would actually miss that cheating son of a bitch, but at least he knew where his healing buttons were. "By that I mean even the mass of the planet has changed significantly, enough to alter it's orbit." The image on her screen shifted as she hurriedly typed out a message. Work calls, gtg. "That's...one big bomb."

"Miranda." Jacob rolled his eyes. "One of the continents? Gone. And the other side of the planet cracked like an egg. All that is kind of a given."

She scowled at the orange display. "I know, but just imagine what it would do to something like the Citadel. Even the mere threat of it, a genuine planet cracker. If they had this what did they need on Eden Prime?"

The indicator light on Tali's helmet flickered on and off a few times. "Wait, it's still exploding?And we're going on it!?"

At that moment the door to the Mako opened to allow Commander John Shepard's head in. "So! Geth, exploding planet, I'm driving." He pulled back to let two other people into the compartment as the ship continued to shudder through the heated turbulent atmosphere of the planet. Tali sat up, rigid, no doubt trying to pick out which of the three was worse.

Shepard's driving, of course. But she was sure the planet was going to come in a close second.

"Buckle up."