The Shadow of Old Transgressions (Homeworld/Mass Effect Crossover Quest)

The Heartlands

Cradle Nebula
The Great Harborship, Bentus

After considering the situation you send a ping to Ulysses. "How close do you need to be to get a good shot on Ninhursag?"

Ulysses takes a few moments to run the calculations. "The closer the better obviously, but if we don't want to get involved in the main fight, then I'd say 12 SUs. I've plotted a course that will bring us within that range on our way to the young ones, but it will cost us time." He sends a series of waypoints to your navigation submind.

You hesitate. Your instincts scream at you to go protect the youngest bentusi. But your instincts also tell you to fight beside the eldest. Finally you send the course to Laverna. "Alright we'll do it, but we can't stop for anything else on the way to the children. So Laverna, keep us covered. I'll deal with any of the barnacles that get too close. Ulysses, concentrate on making the perfect shot. We only have one shot at this."

"I'm on it."

"I'll double check my capacitors."

Your small flotilla dives into the battle space. Unfortunately the path Ulysses has charted is not an easy one. Thousands of T-Mat fighters have turned the entire region into a massive dog fight and knots of barnacle frigates have formed around the remaining sentinels. Laverna sends wave after wave of acolytes at the incoming fighters while your dervishes dance around you killing anything that gets close.

You yourself engage in a running duel with three barnacle frigates. None of them alone are your match, but they have heavy armor and keep rotating out of the battle before you can manage to cause any major damage. Their cannons keep up a continuous barrage of heavy metal impacting your defensive fields. It's nothing beside the firepower of a Wraith Carrier, but it's still a noticeable strain.

Through it all Ulysses is preparing his siege cannon. The armored hatch slides open and the massive weapon emerges from its berth. Your sensors read the massive energy spike as his secondary reactors spool up to begin feeding its massive capacitors. Drones dart around the edges of the weapon making last minute adjustments as the cannon's opening begins to glow from the growing plasma sphere.

You're being positively swarmed by fighters now and another two barnacles have joined the assault. It's not the worst fight you've ever been, but without Ulysses assistance it's pushing you hard. Your defensive fields are starting to overload and Laverna is running out of resources to build new acolytes. Finally though you reach the point of closest approach.

Ulysses swings around and with a final pulse of power releases the massive siege charge. It flies across the battlefield like a raging sun. It flies across the space separating your flotilla from Ninhursag like an unstoppable god. Several T-Mat fighters can't get out of the way in time and are simply incinerated, their masses too low to disrupt the titanic forces holding the sphere together. Ninhursag itself is not blind to the threat and desperately rolls to bring its most intact armor to face the charge. Unfortunately for Ninhursag however that just plays into Ulysses's plans as he deliberately targeted the siege cannon at the side opposite Bentus, and the elder Bentusi now makes full use of the opportunity to fire on Ninhursag's weakest armor.

Then the plasma sphere detonates, and the battle is lit up with the light of a short lived star. Hundreds of T-Mat fighters and barnacles are destroyed outright while the ones at the edges of the destructive wave are sent flying. Ninhursag itself is shoved back towards Bentus as the massive energy wave slams into its armor. The enormous ship is too heavily armored to be destroyed even by that level of power, but as your sensors clear you can see that its armor is cracked and rent through. Enormous pieces of debris are even flaking off.

It's not out of action, but you can be satisfied that you've done your part to level the playing field between the two titanic warships. Now it will be up to Bentus to finish the fight. For your part wIth Ulysesses now free to help you're able to beat back the barnacles and focus on a full burn to the cluster of young chrysalises.

You've been keeping one sensor array focused on them the entire time, and fortunately none of them have taken any damage. Unfortunately that was at the cost of their guardian. You've never met that particular sentinel before and you're too far away for a real conversation, but the ghost of a handshake passes between you as you realize its intent.

With your imminent arrival the Sentinel knows that the children will still be protected. And so rather than make a terrible choice between its own survival and any of them getting damaged it pushes itself far beyond its limits as it rushes a group of barnacles that have been trying to slip past it. With all its turrets and cannons blasting at full power it rams right into one, kills another, and then forces its reactor to detonate to catch the last three before they can get away.

The sacrifice is perfectly timed as your farthest acolyte wings are just arriving to take over the duty of fighting the approaching T-Mat. And shortly afterwards your flotilla slides into place around the young ones. You, Laverna, and Ulysses hold a small moment of silence for the fallen warrior, but there isn't time for a proper memorial. There are more barnacles inbound to replace the ones destroyed and you can't risk any of them getting a lucky shot.

Laverna and the shepherd drone evacuate their hangar bay of everything remaining and scoop up the chrysalises. You quickly network with the older corvettes and ignoring their torrent of questions and desperate cries upload an emergency jump to their hyperspace cores.

A dozen gold rectangles open as your friends and the children perform an emergency jump out of the battle space. But you remain behind, unwilling to make a jump while there is even the slightest chance that one of the children will suffer a hyperspace failure of any kind. For long moments you face the entire T-Mat swarm alone. The depleting acolytes wings are no longer enough to keep the T-Mat fighters at bay and they begin to make strafing runs to chip away at your armor even as dozens of barnacles focus their fire on your failing defensive field.

Fortunately it only takes a few moments for your subminds to confirm that the area is clear of all the pilgrim and chrysalis signatures. With a sign of relief you activate your own hyperspace core and a quantum gate scoops you away from danger.

---

The jump is a short one, and you emerge to find the void awash with the chatter of the young ones. They ask what is going one, what happened to Bentus, who you are, where the enemies came from, if everyone is going to be alright, and on and on. Laverna is trying to answer them, but she's being overwhelmed and Ullysses is little help.

You take control with a loud ping of the local network. "I'm sorry but now is not the time for questions. We're still in danger and have to move. Now do you all remember your emergency lessons?" You don't wait for an affirmative. "We'll be heading to the Tantalus Bastion. Everyone dampen your emissions. And don't use the fleet net unless it's critical. We need to make sure no one hears us until we're there."

Having quieted the young ones for now your flotilla makes its way towards the bastion. It is not entirely quiet of course. The young ones find that they have critical questions they absolutely need to ask, and occasionally softly talk with each other. But you plot a route through the thickest dust clouds and after a nerve wracking, but mostly uneventful two days manage to make it to the bastion where Iuno and Aurora went earlier.

Unfortunately the bastion is dark as you slip into its curving harbor. You see Aurora, Iuno, and all your flicker friends, but not the sentinels you were hoping for. The only movement is the bastion's quiet caretaker drones tending to the dark hulks of the ancient war forms.

You allow the children free reign. Inside the bastion's defenses they are safe as anywhere in the nebula, and they spill out to begin exploring while you talk with Aurora and the others. Apparently there weren't any sentinels here when they showed up. They decided to wait for you rather than try to find another bastion or sentinel patrol.

Unfortunately without a sentinel the bastion is not nearly as useful as it might be. The automatic defenses will protect you, but none of your are sentinels so you only have access to the civilian docks. Which are little more than a bare bones rest area. As such your options are fairly limited.

[ ] Return to the Fight
You could leave the children here while the rest of you head back to help Bentus. This would let you help in its fight with Ninhursag, but leave the children relatively unattended. Unfortunately none of you are elders so even if one of you stays behind actually keeping the children in check will be difficult. And if you don't leave anyone it's likely someone will leave. The older ones do have hyperspace cores of their own after all.

[ ] Take the children and retreat
It goes against the grain to leave Bentus unaided, but you could take the children to another harborship in one of the other safe havens of the Bentusi. Not only would that keep them safer, but you would also be able to hand them off to an Elder or better yet a gestalt of Elders. Someone who is used to dealing with dozens of hyper intelligent juveniles.

[ ] Try to hack the bastion
The War forms are right there. Along with all the resources of the bastion. You aren't a sentinel, but you and your friends have some experience with cracking security codes. You could try to gain access to the bastion's resources. Maybe even one of the war forms. Of course the Bastion is specifically warded against a Bentusi trying this. It's not like you're the first one to have this idea.

The Heartlands

Cradle Nebula
Tantalus Bastion

In the end you decide you can't pass up the opportunity to acquire a war form. Not with the T-Mat and Wraiths loose in the galaxy. And not without any elders here to stop you. Better to present them with an already accomplished hack than ask permission after all. You still remember the effort you had to go through to get Memnon to give you a cruiser schematic.

Still there is the question of what exactly to try and crack. There are dozens of hulking vessels here. It is after all one of the pacification fleets of the ancient Bentusi that enforced their peace on the galaxy. Their silent forms drifting in the clouds of the nebula like imposing guardians. If they had all been awake they could crush the Wraith fleets at the grand conclave. Sadly however you cannot simply reactivate them all, even if you had the codes to their security systems.

These are not true Bentusi after all. Simply empty shells awaiting the installation of a Bentusi core. And you have a sharply limited supply of Bentusi at the moment. You personally are already in a cruiser. It may be small and light compared to some of the grand battleships here, but it wouldn't be as much of an upgrade for you as for the others. The next most logical candidate would be Ulysses, but he doesn't wish to abandon the siege cannon, and there's no guarantee you'd be able to retrofit any of the war forms with it. Iuno and Aurora are both non combatants for the most part. Aurora might be willing, but there is still a better possibility. Laverna has not upgraded her form in quite some time. She is still a valuable part of the fleet with her control of the acolytes and dervishes, but a new larger carrier would be quite an advantage.

So with that in mind you have found a Temple class Battle Carrier. It's a massive vessel dwarfing all of you but Iuno. Its shape is reminiscent of a harborship with a massive central hangar and trailing impulse fins. However it is sharper somehow with a smaller central opening and heavy golden armor. Ion turrets that wouldn't be out of place as the main weapons of a smaller ship dot its hull, but its primary weapon of course live in its hangars. Both the central one and the auxiliary hangars that trail down its fins.

All told it has room for hundreds of fighters supplied by over a dozen flash forges. Most of them are acolytes. It might seem strange, but the humble acolyte is in fact a relic of the ancient Pax Bentusi. At the time it was judged that even a fighter designed for war wasn't a major threat to anyone but pirates. Indeed the millennia of continuous refinement since then means that the ones Laverna already has are better than the ancient strike wings sleeping in the Temple's hangars. But there are other things too.

Massive Adept heavy bombers that make your Cherubs look like the children's toys that they effectively are. Ghost stealth fighters that can slip through even the tightest sensor nets. What looks like a heavy gunship so old you don't even have records of it. And given the number of unfamiliar fabricators you suspect there are even more classes locked in the Temple's database. Not to mention the fact that you'll probably be able to build your own drones much more easily.

The prospect is very exciting and has you, Laverna, and Ulysses tossing ideas back and forth over the possibilities. But of course you'll need to actually break the security on the ship first. Which will not be easy. In fact it will be so hard that you decide to bring Oracle 13 in to help. Asking an outsider to break Bentusi encryption goes against the grain, but you feel the situation is serious enough to warrant.

You, Oracle 13, and Laverna plan your approach. You decide to start with a wide ranging frequency burst to try and find any weakpoints in the Temples networks. Oracle 13 proves extremely adept at this as its many Keeper entities allow it to consider thousands of different attack vectors and launch waves of probe packets.

As your focus deepens on preparing the siege programs needed to assail the weak points that Oracle 13 has found you are dimly aware of other things. Iuno is telling the children the stories of the ancient Bentusi. Specifically of the fleet here. They may be empty now, but they were once worn by Heroes. Ancient sentinels who battled to bring peace to the galaxy. She tells them of Shining Horax who fought the Seven Kell Tribes to a standstill. Of Merciful Celsus who protected the convoys fleeing the Batarian Hordes. Of the sacrifice of Brave Octavia in the fight against dread Enlil. You idly wonder how this will impact the children. These aren't tales that are commonly told. They aren't secret, but they are ancient. Usually only told interspersed with various other myths and definitely not regaled in the shadow of the war forms themselves.

But your attention is quickly diverted back to the cyber war developing in the data ports of the Temple ship. You and Laverna have breached the entrance, but that is just one layer of the defenses, and in many ways the least of them. Now the ship's ancient security sub minds rouse from dormancy. You and Laverna race through the digital realms of the ships internal network to cut off and isolate the subminds before they can reactivate the Temple's counter intrusion cogitators. In a ship that size they'll likely have more computing power than your entire network.

They aren't just passively defending either. The security subminds are unleashing the fruits of Bentusi data warfare on you. Most of which is actually ineffective as it automatically deactivates on contact with a Bentusi mind, but some isn't. Laverna is hit with a worm that turns her mind back on itself. She is trapped in a recursive loop that she struggles to free herself from and you make the difficult decision to leave her to it. Oracle 13 is busy holding the network ports open and you can't take any time away from attacking the subminds.

While this is going on another less hostile exchange is taking place. Ulysses is trying to find his way into the good graces of the Tantalus Bastion's security systems. It isn't willing to let him access the weapons, but he's managed to find a loophole to access its sensor systems. He suddenly pings an urgent message at you, but unfortunately you have no time to examine it.

You are turning the full focus of your attention on the Temple, and you are winning. Fortunately you have experience with isolating systems from themselves. Your experience with the Wraith corruption has given you significant insights both in how to infiltrate Bentusi systems and how to isolate sections of it. It makes you a little uncomfortable to be using those lessons on a Bentusi ship, but well it is just a ship and not an actual Bentusi. Besides, you're in too deep to stop now.

With the help of a last set of worms you set one security sub mind to chasing its own shadow through the networks while you swiftly dissect the other. Its parts spread around you in the digital realm. A glittering constellation of data packets and algorithms. You make an edit here, and here, and here. Then recompile. And now you are an authorized user. With a swift command you disarm the other submind with your now valid codes.

At last you have time to read Ulysses's message. Though unfortunately it's too late. He's been trying to tell you that the Tantalus's sensors have been picking up a large incoming signature. And now it is close enough that you don't even need the Tantalus to sense it. And unfortunately you recognize it. A T-Mat starfish is slipping out of the gas clouds.

Tantalus's response is instant. As soon as the Starfish is in range it opens up with countless weapon batteries. Ion cannons of all sizes fill the surrounding space with beams of destruction. Unfortunately the Starfish is also armed, and its response is just as deadly as its own ion cannons return fire. Soon the space between them is filled with an apocalyptic light show, and you are left with a deeply unpleasant realization.

There isn't anything here that would affect the larger battle. Except maybe your own small fleet, but that's debatable, and you doubt the T-Mat would have dispatched a Starfish to look for you. Which means this Starfish must have been sent on a general search pattern. And if the T-Mat can afford to detach a Starfish from the larger battle then it portends poor things for the outcome of the battle.

[ ] Protect the Tantalus Bastion
You can't let the Starfish destroy the bastion and with it the war forms. Or well you aren't actually sure if the Starfish or the Bastion would be victorious. Tantalus is extremely heavily armed after all. But at the very least you can't let the starfish get away and report the bastion's location. Laverna is currently integrating with the Temple, but you, Ulysses, and your flicker allies can take the fight to the Starfish and cripple its engines.

[ ] Gather the Children and Flee
You can't forget that you have dozens of innocent lives to take care of, and if a Starfish is here there will likely be other T-Mat ships following it. Or at least be willing to investigate if it doesn't report back. Plus there is the problem of Laverna. She is still shaking off the effects of the recursion loop and needs time to integrate with the Temple ship. The Tantalus Bastion is important, but in the end it's just an oversized drone. Expendable and replaceable if it means saving Bentusi lives.

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Quest Note: Sorry about the delay. I've been distracted with Armored Core and Book of Hours.