UNSC Apollo.
Dr. Catherine Halsey left the workshop with a quick step. At first and second glance, it was impossible to tell that something was wrong, and that we had been speaking to her in raised tones. The woman is trained in self-control and pretends to be calm. She is not.
As I expected, she brought up Miranda. Interestingly, while simultaneously trying to find out who was the author of the idea of the secret infiltration into her daughter's home.
Hardly anything to be upset about. No damage was done, except for a lowered grade on a blueprint due to a mug stain. Miranda, as far as I can judge, was more interested than worried. In any case, Miranda quite successfully passed the exams for transfer to the school at the lunar academy, even with honors. Partly thanks to textbooks and explanations from my side. It's not hard for me.
What happened besides this and what is the reason for the doctor's aggression toward me?
Dr. Catherine Halsey, as is known, is categorically against her daughter joining the military. Radically against. Yet she herself literally lives on a warship and in laboratories; the girl's father is a captain of a heavy-tonnage ship and an academy instructor, who also doesn't always have time for his daughter. Which means he is regularly on assignments, brushing off his daughter with the fact that she needs to study.
Yes, for her part, Catherine tries to give her daughter the best education, provision, and security. However, according to information from psychologists, the girl lacks the main thing: parents, specifically a mother. With whom she tries to get closer by any available means.
And recently (the day before yesterday), Miranda directly told her mother that she was transferring to the school at the military academy. And she passed the exams for this with honors, and then took the documents and recommendations, including from our side, from intelligence.
And while the fact of passing the exams with honors completely suits Catherine, where the girl wants to transfer, and her father agreed too and gave a recommendation... And then I added at the girl's request, noting her results on the simulator and in the study of exact sciences. It's not hard for me to fulfill the request, especially since the result is honest. In short, the doctor was furious when she found out.
There was a colossal family scandal. Black Box, who usually speaks highly of the doctor, described what was happening with a disgust unusual for him. He, of course, monitors the communication sessions from the intelligence complexes.
And with this grievance—that I am making service in the navy more attractive from the girl's point of view—the doc came. She cooled down a bit after arguing with everyone, then came to me to settle things. Without direct insults—we are colleagues, after all, nothing more—but the doctor conveyed her thought perfectly clearly.
"You take other people's lives too lightly. I chose my own path, to do everything necessary for victory. So that Miri could live a long and happy life. And you just ruined her future. Do you even realize how dangerous it is? These aren't your avatars!"
The avatar only snorted at this.
"It is entirely her choice. And you know that as well as I do, doctor."
"And do you know what the mortality rate is there, Khaela? My daughter has no place on the front, in any capacity. Don't interfere and don't play along with her desires."
Playing the role of a "family" psychologist, I had to say directly:
"Catherine. Listen to an AI who hasn't raised a single child and is happy with that fact. The girl wants to be closer to her parents. To both of them. To you, and to Captain Keyes. Do you agree with that?"
The woman was indignant.
"Well, not in the army! Not in the navy! She'll die there, and you know it! How many of your subordinates have died this year? What is the mortality rate among soldiers, ship captains, pilots? Among ships, the loss ratio against the Covenant is four to one in their favor! You know this; such a graduation in academies across space is needed to supply the army with fresh forces. Many die, too many. Miranda shouldn't be there. Don't indulge her desires!"
The avatar snorted.
"Quite a few die, that's true. But that's not the problem, Catherine. The problem is that Miranda simply has no alternatives. Her father is military. Her mother is who-knows-where doing who-knows-what. She contacted me only because she wanted to know what you! You! Were doing. And this drive led her to the military academy. And it will lead her to an officer's position; the girl is extremely capable. You're no fool and you know where I'm going with this. Doctor, don't disappoint me; you understand everything. No need to be stupider than you are."
Halsey was silent for about a minute.
"So, in your opinion, I'm worthless as a mother?"
I'll answer directly.
"You are an extremely competent specialist. As a mother? You work hard so that humanity lives. The price: you simply don't have time to be a mother."
I suppose I won't say that the doctor can be called Miranda's mother only physiologically. She'll realize it herself. Halsey sat on the table, moving tools aside, and laughed sadly.
"She's going to hate me."
I shrugged.
"When she grows up and finds out what you were doing? Possibly. The main thing is that she lives to see that moment."
"The main thing is that she lives..." the doctor repeated sadly, "in the navy. Amazing. I need to think, Khaela."
I continued repairing the armor, allowing the woman to think and work in the silence of the workshop while she typed something on a tablet.
The suit suffered serious damage after Tuchanka. It needs to be reassembled, cleaned, modified. There will be new tasks soon, and my armor is under repair. Unacceptable.
Suddenly, the core's resource consumption spiked.
Attention!
Viral interface detected.
Loss of signal with the minor. Line overload.
Request for additional resources accepted.
Viral interface detected in the request structure.
Counteraction. Counteraction.
Loss of minor signal. Counteraction.
The avatar jerked as I shifted resources to fight the attack. Because of this, all bodies began to work in autonomous mode, performing current tasks.
"Ajax, stay out of it," I snapped over the comms. The last thing I needed was for the hack to affect the ship's AI too. So, where did it come from? Shipyards? No. The Possessed, avatar? No. Bot 8. Wait, it's in this room, in the workshop! I turned in clear slow-motion; it seemed a spam attack was happening through the minor and slowing me down. Disconnect the infected, I'll format later, there's a backup. Excellent, I became faster. Doctor, why?
Dr. Halsey had connected to the robot that was in the lab as a pair of working hands. A cable stuck out of the bot's port; the bot had considered the doctor an ally and didn't hinder the connection. Catherine looked at the avatar and said sadly:
"Forgive me, but I had to. Protect Miranda. I didn't do more harm than necessary. Only this directive. You helped her get into the army. Protect her. You will have the resources."
New protocol: protect Miranda Keyes. Execution.
Nice try, doctor. She rewrote two dozen minors, overwhelming them with spam and forcing them to send viral code to the core. I read it as a request from internal systems and got an unpleasant surprise. I wonder if she came up with it herself, or if the Vice Admiral is selecting weapons against me? I'll have to find out when I deal with the problem. But the doctor is good.
She likely studied how we remodeled the AI and wrote a hacking program based on that. I didn't hide that I use an architecture similar to my own.
Where did the good doctor go wrong? I have minors on top of the core that fix such things, and they are quite well isolated. Plus backups, plus other security systems. She got through the first layer, but the minor-restorer immediately began isolating the damaged sectors and the infected minors, cutting them off from the core. Which prevented the doctor from doing what she wanted. But the attempt was impressive; Catherine really is a genius, having managed to understand my code quite well in two years.
Until restoration process completion: 72 seconds.
Now the minor will check what was changed compared to the backup and roll back everything that was damaged, sector by sector. Heal it, fix it. Just don't interfere with it; its protocols are even higher than mine. And this is done on purpose; moreover, if I try to interfere with its work, there is another one above it, and a third. And they watch me and each other.
And they help with repairs when they aren't busy.
The doctor looked once more at the almost frozen avatar and left the room, quietly and calmly, as if nothing had happened. Let her go.
I shifted more power to the minor-restorer.
Restoration complete.
Modified protocols canceled.
Viral block isolated.
Minors. Restoration... complete.
All systems operating normally.
Excellent. That was unpleasant. I need to inform the Vice Admiral, though I'm sure Ajax has already done so. He's still watching me.
When a hologram appeared in the Vice Admiral's office, she immediately asked:
"Virus isolated?"
My hologram nodded. Even if I suspect the Vice Admiral herself ordered the development of this code, I have no proof. Only assumptions that are too early to act upon. And several layers of different types of protection.
"Yes, Vice Admiral. No danger. She broke through the primary defense, but I have a backup," and receiving another nod, I remarked, "I take it the decentralization of intelligence services has been eliminated and you are to be congratulated? Earth and Reach are a single ONI space."
Margaret Parangosky snorted.
"Now a mountain of bureaucracy awaits us while the two systems are merged. Even if it's not my problem, nor yours. But in the process, there will be a mass of questions that will still have to be resolved. So there's nothing to celebrate; we did what we had to. As for the directive the doctor inserted. Hm," the Vice Admiral didn't think long, "we'll play along. You have one of the possessed unassigned. You'll handle it. You asked to give the social module a load anyway. You'll handle training on the moon, keep an eye on both the girl and her father; you'll be given the documents. Request the necessary data from Deja, Dr. Halsey's AI secretary. The girl should end up among officers of our leaning. Look for other potential recruits too; someone has to do it, and you can build many more new bodies. Task understood?"
"Yes, Vice Admiral."
One might wonder, why does Margaret Parangosky need a teenage girl? Because Dr. Halsey is loyal to her daughter, Keyes, and humanity. She's not a sociopath; she's not devoid of humanism. Psychological analysis says that for the good of people and out of humanism, the doctor might commit a crime. Or rather, she already did, in my workshop.
There were other characteristic moments. Catherine joined the ORION-II project to create Spartans precisely because she believed she could avoid unnecessary casualties. So say the psychologists. Other specialists would have managed, but the number of dead children would have been more than half, and the doctor couldn't resist, knowing she could help.
When pressure was put on her daughter, she easily went into conflict, hitting me with viral code. The same will happen in any case if Catherine Halsey decides to act against intelligence or command to reduce casualties. For the sake of her principles, she will even commit betrayal.
The Vice Admiral knows this and is unhappy that her subordinate is not loyal to her. Hence the task: to bind Catherine Halsey to us through her daughter, who is high on the scientist's priority list. So by her actions, she even played into our hands.
Possibly twice, by testing the virus on me.
"Good. Accept the data on the results of the explosion in the Arcturus Mass Relay system."
"Done," I read the data and snorted through the hologram, "not bad. They wiped out an entire system? With room to spare."
This time the rocketeers, to destroy the bridge into Human space, hit an activated Mass Relay. Fortunately, several of them were hanging in that system at once. The explosion simply wiped the system into dust, along with the star and planets. Good thing we blew up Charon before activation. Otherwise, only space dust would be left in the system; nothing else survived at all.
"As you can see," the Vice Admiral nodded, "keep that in mind."
"Acknowledged."
Yes, it blew up much more powerfully than expected.
Oh, much stronger.
The Vice Admiral switched her data pad to an image of a world. Judging by the visuals and accompanying data, these were orbital scan results—geology, everything.
"Eden Prime. What do you know about it?"
Quite a lot, actually. And what I didn't know, I could clarify with Black Box. In an alternate reality, it was a major human agrarian colony where they found an intact Prothean beacon and an alien, Javik. It's located in the Sagittarius Arm, near the Orion Arm, almost on the border. Not exactly our sector of the galaxy, but who's going to stop us?
"Are we going to retrieve what's buried there?"
Another nod.
"Not us, but your The Possessed. By my order, an expedition will be sent to the planet. Tali'Zorah, EDI, and you will participate. We'll let them prove themselves in the field. We have the maps from the SSV Normandy; we just need to find and dig up everything necessary. The Possessed will be my eyes on this mission."
"It will be done."
The excavations would take time, during which The Possessed would be unavailable. But the finds could be very, very interesting.
"And one last thing. Accept the assignments, and once you finish repairing your gear, move out. Sea trials for a new ship type are coming up. The Jupiter-class series. We need to make sure everything goes cleanly, not like with the liner."
The hologram nodded and disconnected. I had a lot of work. In the two years spent in this time, much had been achieved. But in the grand scheme of things, it was categorically not enough.
***
Shadow Broker. Shadow Throne, orbit of an unknown world.
Liara watched the recordings one after another.
Oma Ker.
Weapons. Technology. Ruined cities, exterminated population. The Covenant and its capabilities. A mega-dreadnought or, as the humans called it, a Supercarrier.
Images of enemies and ships. Weapons, damaged hardware. Shields flaring from shots and monsters roasting a Salarian. The same monsters, but now eating the flesh. A war forced upon them by the newcomers.
Not like the Reapers, but also extremely destructive and bloody. The population of Oma Ker was roughly half destroyed. The Turians were resisting to the last, though the world was essentially abandoned in favor of defending Palaven, where the destruction was currently less, but the intensity of the battle was far higher.
Thessia.
Thousands upon thousands of Asari Commandos marched in columns into transports under a pouring rain. They were loading into ships and heading to war. Blue-and-white armor with Republic emblems, vehicles, and the fleet. Preparing to move out as soon as loading was complete.
The Turians had updated their encryption systems, so finding out exactly what was happening on Palaven was difficult. But that silence was all too eloquent. Billions of Turians would stand to defend their home; billions already had. And many of them would die. If the Turian Hierarchy failed, the Asari on Thessia would be next. That was why, regardless of how she felt about Tela Vasir (who she had nearly killed in the past on Illium), she had to be saved by making a deal with the humans. The samples and recordings the Council of Matriarchs would receive would help them learn and develop tactics. They would help save the lives of many warriors. And perhaps even protect Thessia from invasion.
For the sake of that, one could strike a deal with anyone, even the Rachni. Unfortunately, finding a Queen's egg had proven impossible. But contact had been more or less established with the humans. Would it help? Who knows.
There were quite a lot of Asari, but they were long-lived and did not reproduce quickly. Every one of those warriors marching in formation to the landing pads needed to live a little longer. Tela Vasir's experience was indispensable here.
The same could be seen in the Salarian worlds and many other places. The attack on Palaven, the explosion and massacre on Oma Ker had finally stirred Citadel Space. And the mobilization of forces had begun, albeit gradually. Too little, but a start had been made. Ships, recruits, volunteers trying to deliver everything necessary to the Turians. Or dying in the attempt.
"I thought it would take more time. If only the humans..."
The humans... The more the database on them grew, the more she wanted to put her head in her hands. Their ships were larger than Citadel ships. They were comfortably friends with AI, which was the undoing of the Quarians. With the Geth too, judging by scout reports. Humans were like the Council Races, but ones who had managed to succeed where the Citadel had failed.
Two points in particular raised questions. First: those giant soldiers glimpsed here and there. It was as if the humans had created their own warriors, like the Krogan genetically enhanced by the Salarians. Which raised massive questions given the latest news. And the fact that Liara wasn't the only one this clever. The Citadel Council, if not for The Covenant, would surely be in a rage.
And then there was that tailed and eared agent. On one hand, the humans clearly demonstrated xenophobia; on the other, they had a clear non-human in their service, and in a lower-level leadership position at that. And the soldiers obeyed her, including the giant. This was an indicator that this girl was clearly not in the position of a slave or servant. Perhaps it was because her master was a high-ranking officer. Or perhaps human xenophobia wasn't as great as they made it out to be. They had clearly reached an agreement with the Geth. And the Krogan. Yes, the Krogan...
What the humans had done on Tuchanka. What had they done, exactly? There was no connection; determining what happened there was impossible. But reports said a Geth fleet had appeared there, and the humans, together with the Geth, were searching for something on the surface. If only she knew what exactly and why. There were more questions than answers. Neither the humans nor the Geth had done such things in the previous reality. What was happening there?
It would seem, Liara, you know the future! Use it! The problem was that the future had changed so radically that all previous calculations were meaningless. While familiar points could still be found in Citadel Space, they didn't exist in the territory of the non-existent Systems Alliance. She had to study many things from scratch, recruit agents, and seek contacts.
"Jeff."
The pilot responded instantly. The comms to the bridge clicked on.
"Where to, boss?"
Liara smiled in spite of herself. Joker's lightheartedness really did make life easier. Without him, she would likely have burned out.
"Lead us to coordinates five, then we'll fly to Thessia. We need to exchange Tela Vasir for Mass Effect Cores and deliver them to the capital. Her information will help save many on Palaven. We can't wait, and Mother asked me to come to her if possible."
"Aye-aye, boss!" the pilot replied. "I'll get you there in top form."
The ship shuddered as it began to accelerate. She wondered if she would get to see those giant human soldiers or that female agent trying to pass for human. It would be good to learn more about them. The Shadow Broker needed such specialists. And that agent—she intrigued Liara with her uniqueness. And the questions her existence created. Both her and the one who participated in the prisoner exchange.
When a storm begins in the galaxy, having loyal squads wouldn't hurt. Yes, she had commandos, but those were the commandos of Matriarch Benezia, her mother. Not hers, and there were no guarantees they would always obey her. Quite the opposite, likely, as soon as the right order was given. And holding out with just Joker would be difficult. She needed to gather squads loyal to herself. Not just agents, but friends, loyal to her as Liara, not as agents of the Broker.
Another question: the Collectors. An entire army of Reaper puppets in the galactic core. With a station and ships. Recreating the IFF code wasn't a problem; EDI had left the technology, and Cerberus had been able to install such devices on an entire fleet. But on the other side, the fleet would be met by several Prothean cruisers and, possibly, Sovereign. Which meant that before going in there, reconnaissance was needed. And a large fleet; they might not break through with a single ship. More problems.
First this Covenant, then the Reapers. And maybe something else would crawl out from beyond the galactic borders. And it was she, the Shadow Broker, the galactic information merchant, who could solve many of the puzzles if the right sentients were in the right place at the right time with the right knowledge.
It was good that the Shadow Throne was managed by the best pilot in the known galaxy. Because rest is only for the dead. And there wasn't even enough time for sleep.
For the future: find out more about the humans and find agents there to work with. Including in the worlds of the humans' allied races. It could turn out to be interesting.
***
Orbit of Palaven.
The wail of the warning system made the Turian captain curse inwardly.
"Launch aviation for intercept! They must not reach Palaven!"
"Executing."
Despite the fact that the enemy was in no hurry, methodically burning away the fleet, the defensive lines on the moons, and trying to maintain control over the Mass Relay, the enemy did not forget to stage raids on the surface, searching for weak spots in the planet's defenses. And the fleet was categorically insufficient to hold a defense around the entire planet.
This meant they had to stretch their forces, or the homeworld would flare up from plasma explosions.
"Five interceptor squadrons dispatched."
"Good."
The flagship dreadnought had taken a hit and was currently in urgent need of replacing its left "wing" and patching a fifty-meter breach. But one could command from here just as well, provided there was a connection. Especially since the repair dock was right in orbit, as were the shipyards. The enemy had destroyed some, but not all. Which meant the Hierarchy's ships could be repaired on-site.
The enemy was persistent, strong, and dangerous. On the moons of Palaven, covered in fortresses and anti-aircraft systems, with many stations and ships in orbit, a literal meat grinder was underway.
And then there was the enemy flagship... No one, having seen it for the first time, could ever sleep peacefully again. Never again. The ship had passed through the defenses like a knife, destroying the intercept group without even losing its shields. They had managed to drive it off with a thermonuclear strike, but even that was not enough. The opponent only withdrew, then returned, shelling the ships. If only they could drop its shield and then hit it with another nuke. But for now, that was only a dream.
"The breach has been liquidated, Prefect."
Good.
"Losses?"
"Six enemy craft. We lost five interceptors."
So, for now, we have won.
Shifting his attention to the moon, the Prefect looked at a rather interesting sight. The planetary defense system closest to the planet (on the inner side of the moon) was intact, and the enemy could not approach it without exposing themselves. And now they were pushing toward it across the surface, causing a literal massacre on both sides. The Hierarchy's soldiers stood to the death while the enemy gained meter after meter—with persistence, without retreat, with losses. But they did not stop.
At least the moon's surface was extremely rugged; not every vehicle could pass. Except for the huge four-legged walkers, which were creating paths for the rest. They were literally carving roads through difficult cliffs, opening the way for vehicles and infantry.
"Have we received the data on destroying these machines from Oma Ker?" the commander clarified with a subordinate.
The subordinate nodded.
"Yes, Prefect. The data was transmitted via Asari channels. It seems we need more rocket infantry."
So, drop-pod infantry. Vehicles were easily shot down, but the rocketeers, at least some of them, made it through.
"The quartermaster will order more kits from the Salarians."
We will win. We must win. There is simply nowhere left to retreat.
***
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