Evacuation of the turian and asari from the Reaper.
Extraction of the “shrimp’s” pilot
“We doubted that the geth had gone beyond the Veil,” Captain Anderson said, having reviewed the final data on the Galaxy Map screens, processed by several of the frigate’s VIs.
“I believe it’s your turn to act now, Shepard.”
“Yes, sir!” said the first mate.
“I propose we first deal with those two sentient organics aboard the ‘shrimp.’ A rapid response team led by Lieutenant Alenko…
I propose, Commander, that she head to the archaeologists’ camp and take the Prothean Beacon aboard the shuttle.
On the external mount,” the first mate clarified.
“We managed to prevent the activation of the geth landing force…
Now it’s clear that the task of the geth subordinated to the Reaper really was the evacuation of the Prothean Beacon aboard the ‘shrimp.’ After loading the artifact aboard, it would have taken off immediately.
Whether it would have started firing on the planet or not — that’s another question.
Answering it precisely…
now that’s hardly possible.
And hardly necessary.”
“You suggest the geth are…
indoctrinated?” Anderson asked.
“They’re machines, sir.
And a machine will always quickly come to terms with another machine.
Almost instantly,” said the first mate.
“By human standards, of course.
That’s how ‘Sovereign’ came to terms.” Shepard gave several short orders over the audio channel of his earpiece speaker.
“Lieutenant Alenko, sir, has departed on the first shuttle to the camp location.
With him — three military police who are on duty today.
I’m taking five military police and Corporal Jenkins with me.
On the shuttle we’ll reach the most convenient breach in the hull for our purposes and through it — enter the ship.
The recent scan data unambiguously indicates — the ship is hollow.”
“Go, Shepard,” Anderson said.
“So the shuttles finally came in handy,” the frigate’s commander thought.
“There are two of them in the complement.
Plus — one Mako armored vehicle.
That might come in handy too.”
The captain saluted and stepped away.
A few minutes later, the shuttle was already carrying him to the fallen ship of the unknown race.
“Approaching, sir!” the driver reported.
This time Shepard hadn’t taken Steve — the shuttle’s regular pilot — with him, citing that the upcoming mission was very dangerous and it would be better if a military police officer sat in the driver’s seat.
Steve understood correctly.
He didn’t object, yielding the seat to one of the police officers and staying on the frigate.
“What a monster.
And we put a good hole in it!
Good thing it wasn’t just one.
We have options.” He brought the shuttle’s side up against the sharp edges of the alien’s outer armor.
“Ready, sir.
Opening the cabin,” he unlocked and raised the shuttle’s side door with a key press.
“Wait for you here, sir?”
“Yes,” the first mate confirmed.
“Just keep the vehicle away from the sharp edges.
The screech was barely audible, but it was there.
No need to worsen the damage.
Extra work for the technicians,” Shepard said, rising and habitually racking the bolt of his assault rifle.
“Take one of the isolation containers,” he ordered his companions.
“Seal your helmets.
Switch suit systems to autonomous mode.
Keep your weapons at constant readiness.
Don’t click your beaks, watch your surroundings carefully.
And — listen.
To your feelings and sensations too.”
With these words, he was the first to jump down onto the scaly plates of the inner lining of the “cuttlefish’s” guts:
“Let’s go and ‘take’ the central control block first.
We need to finally shut this monster down.
Is the task clear?” The captain turned his head left to see almost all of his group colleagues.
His answer was silent, cautious nods.
The Normandovtsy looked around, getting used to the sight of the alien’s innards.
“Jenkins, you go second to last.
Behind me — march.” Having given this order, Shepard moved at almost a run along a route known only to him.
There was nothing special for Shepard in the fact that he himself knew exactly where to go, despite the fact that the “path” ran through piles of pipelines, coils of cables, clusters of crates, and assorted hard-to-identify “junk.”
The state of the “String” allowed him to sense his surroundings finely for many meters around.
And not noticing such a bright “spot” as the “shrimp’s” central control block was simply impossible in principle.
And the Normandovtsy, his colleagues, had also grown a little accustomed to the fact that the new — second officer after the commander — knew and could do far more than one might expect from an elite special forces soldier.
Only one feeling troubled the first mate: he knew that soon the intruder would come to and be able to resist.
The time remaining until the Reaper’s defenses reactivated was running out.
He didn’t want to wonder how much time was left until activation — he had to act quickly and efficiently.
Start thinking about “how much to zero?” and you’ll die.
Or, at the very least, fail the task.
Finally, a glowing armored sphere “materialized” ahead.
With a short gesture ordering his companions to stop, Shepard alone approached the sphere.
He peered at its surface, as far as the cone of dim light from his helmet lamp, adjusted to a quarter power, allowed.
He ran the fingers of his armored gauntlet hand along the seams of the petals.
He paused, not removing his palm from the surface of the rim.
And — with a sharp movement, he slid one of the petals aside, forcing the others to fold like a fan.
In the bluish-greenish glow beneath the petals, a transparent sphere was revealed, held precisely in the center of the now-open armored cocoon.
Reaching out to the sphere, Shepard pulled it from the containment field and felt the tension that had reigned inside the ship vanish.
“Jenkins.
The container.
Quickly,” Shepard ordered brusquely, without turning around, waiting for the approaching corporal to hand him the opened isolation box.
Having laid the sphere in it, the captain closed the locks of the inner case, entered one code.
He closed the locks of the outer case, entered a second code.
“Is he really…
dead?!” Jenkins asked quietly.
“And we did it?
Killed this monster?”
“The ship is dead.
But its pilot…” Shepard looked at the container.
Jenkins caught his gaze, looked there too.
“…is alive.” The first mate swept his gaze over his companions, stunned by what had happened.
“Now — we look for the two sentient organics.
I believe the blow caught them in the ship’s ‘central post.’ Quick, quick, follow me,” Shepard ordered.
“We’ll have to carry both of them in our arms, colleagues.
So — we move as fast as possible.
We didn’t bring stretchers with us.
Not even the simplest fabric ones,” the first mate noted.
“Never mind.
We’ll carry them out.
On ourselves, but we’ll carry them out,” as he said this, Shepard made his way at almost a run along the winding path that lay among the ship’s parts torn from their mountings, heading toward the biological activity beacons that flickered clearly on his helmet display.
“Quick, quick, don’t stop!” Despite the fact that the pilot had been removed from the heart of the giant ship’s control system, Shepard was not inclined to think that no emergency control system, operating, of course, fully autonomously, would be found in the Reaper’s depths.
They had to hurry.
Both because the condition of the two sentient organics was worsening.
Not so fast, but — worsening.
They still had to return to the breach and climb aboard the shuttle.
And that all took time, which might already be running out…
Having crossed several ladders of varying sizes, having climbed up a side wall that had become the floor, the landing group entered the “central post” room of the “shrimp.”
Directly beneath the work chair, raised on its bracket, lay a turian, “wrapped” in a heavy armor suit.
Near him, like a broken mannequin, lay an elderly asari in black-and-white robes with a strange headdress.
It had slipped slightly, exposing a wide wound on her forehead.
The medical control indicator on the first mate’s helmet display showed that the turian was in decent shape but in deep shock and unconscious.
But the asari…
As Shepard understood, she had clearly not managed to sit in the other chair, now hanging on the “side” wall, and so had sustained multiple injuries.
With spare, precise gestures, the first mate ordered two police officers to cover the entrances to the central post, while he himself, with Jenkins, bent over the asari.
“Nine hundred and fifty years…
By standard reckoning.
Galactic mean.
I can’t believe it…” the corporal whispered as the first identification data, read from the asari by the suit’s automatics, came through to his omni-tool.
Shepard, meanwhile, was generously applying medi-gel to the sites of the most serious injuries, marked on his helmet medical diagnostic screen by the auto-doctor.
“She’s nine times older than any of us!” the corporal added.
“Get used to it, Richard.
This is now part of our work.” The special forces soldier took a set of splints from his assault backpack and, with several precise movements, fixed the asari’s left forearm and right shin.
Not forgetting to add another layer of medi-gel to the wounds there.
“Right, that’s everything here,” he turned and walked over to the turian.
“But here — it’s more complicated,” the first mate switched on his wrist omni-tool and showed the identification chip data on its large screen to his companions.
“A Spectre?” Three police officers couldn’t hold back their surprised exclamation simultaneously.
Shepard nodded, agreeing with his colleagues’ assessment.
“He’s a tough one!
Though, if the diagnostic is to be believed, he’s almost eighty percent implants,” said the senior police officer.
“He’s barely hurt.
But I would…”
“Inject him, Orest,” Shepard finished his thought.
“We have to drag him to the shuttle.
He’ll be safer that way.
We don’t need him lashing out on the way.
We still have to hand him over to Chakwas.
Along with his companion.”
“I’ll carry him, sir,” the police officer injected the turian with a full dose of immobilizer.
“Good, Orest.” Shepard made sure the police officer’s colleagues would help him, and turned to Jenkins.
“Richard, do you remember the way?”
“Yes, sir,” the corporal watched as the short police officer carried the two-meter turian toward the exit of the “Central Post” with almost no visible effort.
“I remember, sir,” he corrected himself, catching the group commander’s questioning look.
“I’ll go first, sir.
I’ll lead the way, sir.”
“Go ahead, Jenkins.” Shepard watched the departing corporal and, approaching the asari, lifted her into his arms.
“Forward, I’m right behind you,” he told the remaining police officers.
The return trip was predictably difficult.
In particularly cluttered places, they had to pass the limp bodies of both casualties from hand to hand several times.
Shepard looked doubtfully at the biological forms indicator on his helmet display, flickering with a bluish light.
There were no more living beings inside the ship.
And no corpses either.
The ship, deprived of its control element, was silent and still.
This silence put both the police officers and the captain on edge.
The shuttle driver brought the vehicle to the edge of the breach.
The asari and the turian were placed, laid on their backs, on two benches formed from transformed seats.
The police officers, Jenkins, and Shepard stood the whole way back to the frigate.
In the Normandy’s hangar, Major Chakwas met them, coming up into the cabin, scanning both patients with her medical omni-tool, and nodding to Shepard:
“Good.
They’ll pull through fine, John.
Bring them to me in the medbay,” she said, exchanging knowing looks with Jenkins and the other police officers.
Richard, Shepard noted, no longer looked like some all-powerful “hero,” but was commendably calm and composed.
Chakwas, the first mate noted, liked the corporal’s mood.
“Yes, ma’am.” Shepard nodded and lifted the asari into his arms again.
He stepped down onto the hangar deck plates first.
Behind him, the senior police officer carried the turian.
A few minutes later, both casualties were placed on the medical beds in Chakwas’s domain.
The medical major, with a look, ordered everyone, including Shepard, to leave the medbay.
“Permission to go, sir?” The senior police officer and Jenkins approached Shepard as soon as the captain was the last to leave the medbay.
“Go.
Rest.
Thank you all,” the first mate exchanged handshakes with the police officers and the corporal.
The first mission involving a landing on a completely unfamiliar ship had, of course, excited all its participants, so the handshakes helped ease the tension somewhat.
“Yes, sir,” saluting the senior officer, the corporal and police officers went off to the berthing quarters.
Shepard knew they would now have plenty of topics for conversation.
As he left, Jenkins set the container with the control “chip” at the captain’s feet.
Having placed the container in the frigate’s isolation storage, Shepard entered five lock codes and slammed the thick safe door shut.
Captain Anderson approached him silently.
“His heart?” the commander asked.
“More than that,” the first mate replied after a pause.
“A mind.
A pilot.
The foundation,” Shepard said, studying the smooth surface of the storage compartment lid and thinking about what — or who — was behind it.
“I would never have believed it, sir.
But…
He’s there, on that ship — clearly not alone.
I meant to say that he acts as a single being, a single mind…
But in reality, there are…
billions of those minds.
To lock such a thing into such a huge hull and send it to war.
Across such unimaginable distances for a human.
How soulless must one be?!…”
“Can we…
understand…
what they, those who made up the hull of this Reaper…” Anderson indicated the storage door with a look, “…looked like?”
“We can, Commander,” Shepard replied after thinking.
“But I doubt we’re ready for that right now.”
“While you were in there, I ordered the ship’s crew to fence off the ‘shrimp’s’ crash site.
And close it to the colonists.
A fence has been erected and barriers set up.
Barbed wire.
With all the necessary equipment.
We’ve also additionally shielded the crash site of the geth dropships.
And — the places where individual geth fell.
All of this is included in the overall security zone,” the ship’s commander clarified.
“The locals…
They understood our demand to establish a ‘restricted zone’ regime, Captain,” Anderson said.
“Especially since this ‘shrimp’ is clearly visible from a considerable distance.
There won’t be any ‘just looking’ problems.
As soon as you extracted the ‘chip,’ long-range communication from the planet was restored, but since your entry aboard the ‘shrimp,’ I’ve ordered the area ‘closed’ for now and no information about what happened to be sent from the frigate to the Alliance.
On my orders, the ECM post has put Eden Prime under an ‘information blockade.’ Filtering of information flows has begun.
Several more people have joined the ECM post specialists — there turned out to be too much work for the usual staffing.”
Anderson was silent for several dozen seconds:
“To say the colonists and the planet’s administration are in shock is to say nothing.
They’re not even making the usual, and therefore quite predictable, claims about destroyed or damaged infrastructure and crops.
It feels like they understood what this ‘shrimp’ could have…
become for them.
I’ve also ordered all the parts of the geth troopers and their ships to be gathered, and access to the reserve landing pad, where they’ve all been brought by now, closed.
Engineer Adams has already been there and says he’s never seen such perfect machines, which managed to develop independently on the basis of AI.
A networked AI.”
“Artificial intelligence?” Shepard’s attentive gaze met the frigate commander’s eyes.
“Yes,” Anderson confirmed.
“A fully developed artificial intelligence, Captain.
I don’t myself understand in detail how that could be, but the frigate’s engineering group…
is unanimous.
I prefer to trust my people and their judgments, Captain,” Anderson replied.
“It looks like we have a third problem.
If the first is this monster, the second — those two in the medbay, then the geth…
could well be the third problem.”
“A report from Alenko?” the first mate inquired.
“There was, Captain,” the frigate’s commander confirmed.
“A few minutes ago I sent a cargo shuttle there.
It will soon be back in the ship’s hangar.
Then we’ll take the Beacon off the external mount and load it into a container.
I think, if necessary, we can load the Beacon into a container outside the ship too — we have the conditions and capabilities for that.
So we can choose what’s best to do.
We won’t rush.
The archaeologists are happy those ‘walkers’ didn’t get to them.
That’s what they’ve nicknamed those geth troopers — ‘walkers.’ Alenko did an excellent job.
And, it seems, he’s found himself a party there.”
Anderson relaxed a little, paused:
“The commander of the marine platoon assigned by the Systems Alliance Navy to guard the archaeologists.
A certain Sergeant Ashley Williams.
Alenko himself is happy and glad that his migraines no longer torment him.
He’s able to think clearly twenty-four hours a day.
Though…
next to Sergeant Williams, the clarity of his thinking is…
— Anderson smirked…
— Young people…”
“I believe Corporal Jenkins could be granted short-term leave until our departure, Commander.” Shepard left the main decision to the frigate’s commander.
“He has a mother, a father, a sister here.”
“Let’s not let anyone off the ship for now, Captain,” Anderson said calmly and quietly.
“And, I believe, something is seriously troubling you again.”