Okay so 'chapter soonish' became 'chapter after I fish my sister out of the river' but hey, it's still Wednesday. Shut your face.
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71 - Divergence
Scouring the Extranet for information turned out to be a much more worrying proposition than I had initially envisioned. As the Stealth Fabricator's nanites spread slowly through the ship's hardware, I had accessed and subsequently copied across all the data I could grab from its memory banks.
Some of these things were mundane - I found the ship's logs, that marked it as a Kowloon Freighter, the MSV Chubaru. I stole its blueprints, which provided me an 'in' to Mass Effect cores, kinetic shielding, and Eezo-based FTL travel. Those I passed along to Hope. I found the ship's manifesto and shipping logs, which indicated it was returning to the Exodus Cluster following a supply run out to the Voyager Cluster. Those I made copies of and then discarded.
The arrival of another ship through the Mass Relay drew my attention momentarily, and I grinned when I realised what I was looking at. It was about six hundred metres long, covered in point defence batteries and angled armour plating.
It was hard to say - there was never much attention paid to the fleets of the various species in Mass Effect, or starships in general besides the Reapers and the Normandy, but if I had to guess, I'd have labelled it as a Batarian vessel. Which fit, considering the proximity of the Leviathan of Dis to Batarian territory.
With a slight flaring of the thrusters, the Gagea changed course, bringing it closer and closer to the Batarian vessel.
As I had done before, I quickly swarmed the ship with nanites, rapidly obtaining access to everything. Weapons computers, navigation maps, personal terminals, and even a small dossier on proper maintenance of a number of Mass Effect based weapons, armour, equipment and vehicles. Yoink.
I found the interesting tidbit that the Batarian vessel was running not on a fusion torch like the Chubaru, but on antiproton drives - antiprotons were injected into a reaction chamber filled with hydrogen. That caused matter-antimatter annihilation to occur, which provided a huge amount of motive power, flinging the ship forward. The main issue with it was fuel production - antiprotons had to be made one particle at a time, on specially designed stations orbiting energetic stars.
Whilst I was confident my own tech could overcome that shortcoming… well, the antiproton drives weren't that much more powerful than the tech I'd already obtained from the Bright Foundation and the Galactic Federation. I doubted I'd find much use for them.
Then, before I left the ship's 'military grade secure encrypted system' - hah, yeah right, -, I inserted some rather devious pre-made viruses into the Batarian Cruiser's systems. Next time it synced its databanks with something, they would be in for quite a surprise. Bless whichever Progenitor who decided to pre-install subroutines for their Commanders. So very thoughtful of them.
Anyway, moving on to the most important thing: I found communications protocols. I'd taken from the Chubaru all of the protocols I needed to plug myself into the Extranet and start trawling the web, but this Batarian vessel had Batarian protocols for military channels, so I took them, too. First, I took maps, translation codecs, and every scrap of open-source technology I could grab. Then, I turned to… well, it wasn't quite Wikipedia, but it was close.
The current local date as defined by humanity was the November of 2160… twenty years and change before the events of the first Mass Effect game.
Which meant I would have twenty years and change to prepare to fight the Reapers. Hell, that would probably be enough time for me to hand out some blueprints, kick the Citadel into gear, and let them handle it themselves… then again, maybe not. Bureaucrats, and all that.
That in itself wasn't worrying. Thanks to the Leviathan of Dis, I already knew that my ships far outclassed the Reapers, at least in terms of their armament and speed. I had my doubts that the Reapers would be able to detect me through the Phase Cloaks, and even if they could their ability to even damage the ships whilst cloaked was greatly diminished. Again, the whole 'half a step outside physics' thing. With twenty years of build up, I could have…
Well, with twenty days of buildup I could probably destroy the Reapers. It wouldn't even be a challenge.
Although… the Reapers weren't the only problem. The Mass Effect universe had a lot of other issues - the Krogans and their little stillborn issue, the Morning War between the Geth and the Quarians… the Rachni were probably around somewhere, or would appear at some point in the future. The Batarians, perhaps more relevantly, were no longer at risk of being indoctrinated but still a bunch of colossal assholes nonetheless.
By far the biggest problem I could see was Humanity.
Because somewhere along the line, something happened that made them diverge rapidly from canon. And I had no idea what it could have been.
Somehow, the First Contact War went differently… or rather, it never happened at all. The Turians encountered a Human fleet and tried to destroy them, but the Human fleet was able to safely escape through the Relay. Despite the following mass military build up on both sides of the conflict, nothing violent went down, due to the interference of the Asari… and something else.
In canon, the Turians had pushed the Humans back to Shanxi, I think it was called, and then occupied the place after forcing one of Ashley's ancestors to surrender his garrison there. Then Humanity's fleets arrived in force and kicked the Turians off-world, kickstarting a conflict between the two races.
Here, they just… hadn't. Unfortunately, accessing the Citadel Databanks through a stealth fighter relaying a signal from a Batarian cruiser relaying a signal through four Mass Relays and sixteen comms buoys made for painful lag.
I couldn't let that deter me, though - such a huge divergence, and apparently the presence of a third party neither human nor Citadel (although the 'First Contact - Humanity' article was sketchy on the details) - well, it simply required further investigation.
Plots and plans came together in my mind, various ideas clicking together as I discarded others, thinking through the problem. After about a half a second of thought, I had the barest outline of a plan in mind. After another few moments of careful consideration, I nodded, my course determined.
I stepped through the portal to my Hub world, and as one, Hope and I reclaimed command of our abandoned NeoAvatars, putting us 'face to face' once more. "Alright, Hope, here's the plan…"
---
Hope looked at me for a long moment, face blank. And then she started giggling. Her laughter was infectious and I joined in, the two of us giggling away merrily like the universe's most pathetic evil villains. Then again, it wasn't much of an evil plan.
"Seems like a pretty good plan," Hope said once she'd stopped giggling. "I might have a better idea, though - the project I'm currently working on would be absolutely hilarious to use in the Faith Foundation's place. Here, check it out."
She sent me a few dozen terabytes of information, followed by a two gigabyte image named 'tldr.jpg'. Resisting the urge to sigh, I opened the JPEG file and started skimming through the contents.
I frowned. "I really do like the idea, but… I think it's maybe a little on the nose? Something's not right here, and until we figure out what I'd rather we not be so absolutely overt."
Hope sighed and turned her eyes downwards momentarily before perking up again. "But I can still use them later, right? Once we know what's going on?"
"Fuck it, sure, why not. It'll be funny, that's for sure. But, uh. Hold off. Just for now."
"Yeah, okay."
"Good," I said, nodding. "So, uh… bye… sis?"
The look that came across Hope's face as she spluttered through an answer perfectly encapsulated how I felt about the matter. "Uh… yeah. See you around… sis."
That incredibly awkward situation dealt with, I turned my back to Hope, staring into the portal. Before I had a chance to step through it, though, - "Actually, do you mind if I come join you in a little while?"
I turned back, glancing over my shoulder. "Uh, sure. But… why ask me permission? You're me - well, almost, I guess. We're like, twin sisters now, or whatever. If… if you're okay with it, chances are I probably will be too, yeah?"
Hope pouted but acknowledged the point. "Fair enough, yeah. So, uh, just give me like, five minutes to finish up some stuff here, and then I'll come join you?"
"Cool. I'll see you on the other side, then."
---
Now, the first and most critical key component of my plan was access to the Citadel. Now, I doubted that would be too much of a problem - unless the Reapers were significantly more advanced in computing than I suspected, then the Citadel's computer systems would be putty for me, and because of that, I'd have pretty much free reign to give myself access wherever I needed to go.
Plus, since there had already been first contact between Humanity and the Citadel, it wouldn't even be that suspicious to see Humans walking around. The military grade armour and weaponries might have been a little more suspect, but… well, no one ever stopped any of the dozens of thugs Shepard ran into, or Shepard themself, even before they became a Spectre.
Actually, the hardest part of that step would be getting a NeoAvatar to the Citadel. I mean, I could just fly a stealthed unit in there and use it as a spotter for a teleporter, but given that the alternative, doing it properly, would barely be any harder and establish a precedent for the further stages of my plan, I figured I'd just do that.
Which meant I'd need a ship.
Of course, I couldn't just have my units flying around in Mercuries - they'd be noticed in an instant. Pioneers and Migrants were also right out, although that was less an issue of size and more because they simply didn't match the aesthetics of the Mass Effect universe. Especially as combat ships.
If I wanted to do this subtly, I needed my ships to blend in. Which meant that I would need to repeat the process I'd first used for the Starsong, constructing a ship with a workable, feasible inside without revealing too much about the technology that was used to run it.
Which would, of course, simply be amped up Element Zero systems, with a few extra-dimensional goodies tucked away in a corner just in case. Relying on Eezo tech - even stuff derived from the Reapers, the undisputed masters of the stuff (at least amongst the natives), - would still be a pretty serious downgrade.
Marauder Shields - a name I suddenly realised was hilarious given my current location in the multiverse, - were fairly unobtrusive, barely visible even when actively deflecting enemy fire, and reasonably strong for their size, so I made a note to equip them on pretty much everything.
Phase Shields, on the other hand, were far too visible and noticeable for that to be feasible. They'd stand out like a sore thumb. At least I could probably get away with some Phase FTL Drives - so long as no one was looking, they'd probably never tell the difference. Maybe.
Still needed to check whether or not Eezo FTL gave off emissions when it disengaged. Hm.
What else did I have that was better than the Mass Effect equivalent?
Elysion Cores were vastly superior to Mass Effect's own Life Support systems, but they would be relatively easy to hide. My medical tech was… well, it was better than the single-bed medibay on the Chubaru, but how it stacked up to full hospitals on the Citadel, I had yet to see.
Sensors… actually, scratch that. I could just have all the sensors - I doubted anyone would ever notice. And if they did observe that my sensors seemed a little too advanced, or had too much range, then I could always wave it off as sensor buoys or something. No big deal.
The other system I'd have to completely replicate was propulsion. Flying around with the high-power, high-efficiency engines I had would probably raise a few eyebrows. That said…
The Chubaru possessed a single fusion torch, presumably its main engine, and a number of smaller ion drives for maneuvering. If I was to replicate that pattern - well, I'd need much stronger thrusters, for one. The fusion torch provided woefully inadequate acceleration for a warship. The Batarian Cruiser was much more adequately equipped with Antiproton drives, but even they were rather… lackluster.
Instead, I decided to simply alter the designs of the thrusters I already had, changing the shape of the casings to better reflect the design aesthetics of the Mass Effect universe. It would be noticeable if anyone focused their sensors on the ship's engines that they operated off different principles, but hopefully no one would be looking at them that closely anyway.
As a precaution, I added a number of Antiproton drives to the rear of the ship anyway. Despite their huge thruster power, they simply weren't good enough to adequately replace what I already had.
And so, the rules set out and an appearance in mind, I started up the design program and got to work.
