The Unbound II (Homeworld: Cataclysm/Mass Effect)

Not as long as I would have liked it, but I decided that something to push things along would be better than waiting it out. So....

Surprise update!

**********

Arcturus Station
L5 Themis Lagrangian Point
+14 hours since the pirate attack

Most people got a good rest cycle on Arcturus stations administration level. Not Anton Sidorov. The section chief of the Alliance intelligence arm hated his personal witching hour. Something about the dimmed lighting in his quarters and that border between being awake and asleep made him introspective, made him wonder about the choices he had made to get this far. That and whether the Alliance would get a great big screwing in the ass in the next four weeks or so when something invariably blew up because of something they didn’t do, or did but failed to cover up well enough from people who shouldn’t know.

A soft bed didn’t do anything to quell the fretting, and he’d eschewed the use of sleeping drugs. Didn’t even touch the old family cossack cure for insomnia, 100-proof vodka. If only because the mood had a tendency show up when-

“Sir?” the console beside his bed chimed, “Sorry for disturbing you, but I think you need to see this. Deep recon unit out in the Verge investigated a Case Six anomaly, they’ve reported it under the Firebreak Protocol. They’ve just sent the recovered data in on priority channels.”

- things were about to go to hell.

Fully awake now, he swung out of bed with a sigh and punched the reply button a little more savagely than he should have. “Right, forward me the data.”

Case Six meant derelicts where there shouldn’t be, not some luckless civilian freighter either. And the Firebreak Protocol meant someone’s very hot little black operation had come to a bad end before they had had a chance to scrub the really incriminating evidence. Rubbing a hand across his face, he patiently waited as the console scanned his retinas, spoke the twenty six digit memory key, and watched as the holographic display began lighting up with intelligence reports. “Let’s see what part of the galaxy is on fire this time...”

It was less than twenty seconds later when he slammed a hand on the table. “What the devil is this?” He barked at his aide on the other side of the video link, “This is... is...” he struggled for the words to describe just exactly what he felt before giving it up as futile, “It’s too goddamn late for pranks Nattel.”

“Sorry sir,” the grey haired German looked anything but apologetic, “but both Jaider and Wasallia station have already crunched the data through their systems. It’s not a sensor malfunction or manipulation. As far as we can tell, it’s entirely legit.”

Another six seconds passed as he glared at his aide, trying to force his aide with sheer intensity alone to tell him it was a joke so he could eject the man out the nearest airlock.

Unfortunately, Nattel was made of sterner stuff.

“God damn.” Anton resisted the urge to throw something heavy at the console, choosing to pace around his apartment instead. “How the hell did the agency miss something like this? It’s like that mess with Sovereign all over again. Worse! At least with the Citadel invasion we had some warning before it turned to hell. Where in the devil's toybox did this blasted thing come from?” He paged through the rest of the report, hoping for a silver lining in the mess so it wouldn’t be a total...

Fuck.

The section chief pinched his nose and shut his eyes to stave off the impending aneurysm. The derelict was a frigate of unknown design, probably one of the hundred possible variants churned out by the assorted Terminus manufacturers and common enough to be the go to vessel for any half dozen less than legal operations out there. Common enough to go unremarked, but the intel... the information retrieved was incredible, a hint of something fantastic with a lot more if they looked harder. But it was also goddamned impossible. It was too fantastical to be believed, and yet two clearing houses had authenticated the salvaged logs. He looked at the damning evidence again.

The recording was fragmented, filled with static, and only consisting of a precious few seconds of clear footage before disappearing into noise again. But it was there, and his analytical teams insisted it was real. Somewhere out there in the Verge, there was a piece of xenotech nearly the size of the Citadel. In the Verge. Yes, the sector was fairly well travelled so discovery would have been inevitable eventually, but that was besides the point. The Verge was practically the Alliance’s backyard, with every system charted, every active relay monitored for traffic.

And still someone else had found it first.

“Heads are going to explode over this once word of this filters down to the rest of the services.” He muttered before focusing on the dreadnought in the room. “We practically own the Verge, Nattel. There’s no way we could have missed something this big in the initial surveys.”

“Or avoided the notice of the galaxy if it had taken any of the active relays, I am aware sir.”

“So either we have an invisible alien megalith out there that’s only just become visible for reasons we don’t know, or it doesn’t need the relays. Or maybe I’ve actually fallen asleep and I’m having a stress induced nightmare.”

He got an odd look for that. “I wouldn’t think so sir. Nevertheless, it’s a little too early to make any conjecture regarding the anomaly.”

Anton waved him off, turning his attention to the less vexing parts of the report. “Did the recon teams pick up anything else from the derelict? Did it talk to anyone, did it have friends? Communications logs, distress beacons, anything. For that matter, do we even know who it belongs to?”

“Unknown sir, the ship was heavily damaged when the teams found it, and the communications suite was practically scrap.”

“Wonderful,” he deadpanned, “so what do we actually know?”

“We’re still matching patterns for the ships profile against recorded traffic in the Verge, but Analysis thinks the timing is indicative of it being part of a larger group. Seven standard days ago, the SAINTS determined a slight increase in inbound sector traffic, spread out over a period of three days. And then thirty seven hours ago, one of our stealth probes picked up four heavily damaged frigate class ships from the earlier group leaving through the local relay.”

“So a bunch of pirates, treasure hunters, whatever, found this megalith, tried to take it, and got blasted for their troubles. Unknown is whether the thing shot at them, or they got into a fight with a rival gang and came out the losers.” He really wanted a bottle right now. If only to smash it over his head and spare himself the coming agony. He settled for throwing up his arms. “Just great. That means everyone with a halfway competent intelligence service is going to find out.”

“It’s a possibility sir, but we won’t know more until we can have the hulk towed into a salvage facility for in-depth study” Nattel looked off screen for a moment as Anton rubbed his brow, and then coughed diffidently. “but I believe word has already gotten back to the Naval Office at minimum sir. You have an incoming call from Admiral Shepard, flagged as urgent.”

The section chief shot his aide a dirty look. He didn’t need a full intelligence brief to figure out how the Navy could have found out. “Figures. Hasn’t even worn the shine off her bars yet and she’s already giving me more grief than most admirals. Either she’s got more contacts in the Verge than we do, or she’s still got friends in SAICOM who don’t know the meaning of keeping their mouths shut. I don’t know which possibility I like less Nattel.”

The only upshot about the whole mess was that Shepard was less anal about inter-service rivalries than some of the other admirals if it got in the way of protecting the Alliance. “Well tell her to wait a few minutes while I sort out this clusterfuck.”

Slowing the pacing, he rubbed his chin, settling into the proper mindset. He took a breath. Right, he told himself, time to focus. It wasn’t the end of the galaxy, not yet, but it might be the end of his personal ass and his department he didn’t get a handle on this now. “Have Wasallia double check the data again, I want to make sure it’s legit and not someone else’s spooks trying to scare a reaction out of us with false leads. We’re still recovering from that mess with the Sobamee incident. And while they’re at it, get Analysis to sift through the intelligence packet for locational data. If this is the real deal then I want to know where it was found, when it was found, and a dedicated intelligence gathering ship at the incident site last year.”

Scrubbing a hand through his hair, the intelligence chief grunted, “How’d we get this intel Nattel? And not just the sanitized stuff in the report. Section nine from Deep Recon just manages to stumble on a derelict combat ship around a pirate point with this kind of information on it? Something doesn’t sound right here. Why would anyone who shot up the frigate leave behind valuable intel like this?”

His aide looked off screen again, the almost inaudible hum of air exchangers sounding particularly loud as the man went through the relevant information. Nattel shook his head. “I’d say the attackers didn’t have the chance to do so sir. The ship was probably disabled from exacerbated battle damage. Most of the damage comprises of melt patterns consistent with high energy thermal weapons, probably sustained close range GARDIAN fire but we won’t know for sure until the forensics is done.” Images began popping up on Anton’s console as the man forwarded the relevant files. “But from the radiation readings, it’s likely the ship managed to escape before suffering a catastrophic FTL drive failure while in transit.”

“Giving everyone on board a lethal dose of radiation.” Anton grunted, turning the facts over in his mind, eyeing the deep holes that went in one end and out the other. Something about the damage patterns disturbed him though, but he couldn’t put a finger on what it was. He rubbed his chin, deciding to leave the matter for the Forensics department to mull over. “Who do we have out there with the appropriate ship and the clearance to know this right now?”

“Just agent Nox and his cell sir,” Nattel answered after a moment, “they’re not assigned to any priority tasks at the moment.”

“Jensen’s not available is he?” The aide shook his head, “Fine, put Nox on the job, but I want this done under Observer rules. Strictly information gathering only, no overt actions. Anything that looks hostile in that sector and doesn’t fit in the usual threat profiles? I want him out of there, no delays and no excuses. Even if whatever that thing is our derelict found shows up and doesn’t shoot first, he is not to initiate a First Contact protocol without direct authorization from my office. We don’t need the diplomatic and political shitstorm from a Shanxi-lite.”

“On it sir.” A few more seconds of silence passed as Anton’s aide punched in the relevant authorization codes which he confirmed. “Nox acknowledges, he’ll be on station at the anomaly site in six hours.”

“Good,” Anton leaned back and sighed, wishing for a bottle of vodka to make the upcoming headache easier to stomach. “Now that that’s done, patch Admiral Shepard through. Maybe she’ll give me less grief than the last time.”

Nattel gave him the kind of look he hated getting, one filled with a mixture pity and just the right amount of insubordinate smugness to not get called out on it.

“I wouldn’t count on it sir.”

**********

Superheavy freighter P.F. Flubber
Monnovai L4 Lagrangian Point
+16 hours since the pirate attack

It was a simple room where the two Salarians worked, a spartan affair with minimal furnishings to distract the mind. Not that a more lavish furnishing would have caused much of a drop in efficiency. The real distraction lay in the communications networks that ghosted through their consoles.

"Did they receive the intelligence packet?"

A flick of a finger. Reams of data, branching points of information sprouting like a demented tree of flickering light and flashing words. A heartbeat to absorb, process, conclude.

"Yes. Trackers indicate that it's disseminating through their information networks. No failsafes triggered, SAICOM unlikely to realize actual source."

"Good. Status on the Turian Overwatch and Asari Circle?"

Another flick. Two other trees in colours of blue and purple. A single red spark rimmed by a crimson triangle.

"Still processing data, same as the humans. Noticing a four percent increase in Turian fleet activity though. Patrol fleets Decimus and Tecius. May be ordered to investigate anomaly in packet. Asari networks mostly quiet. Councilor Tevos activated two huntress units from personal retinue in last standard hour, but placed them on standby, nothing else. Also noticed increased communications with Omega station"

A considering sound takes the center stage amidst the sudden silence. Fingers drum on hard plastic surfaces.

"Cagey. Tevos possibly suspects other agencies aware, adopting cautious approach. Denial? No. Contacting Aria, not committed, but expanding options. Understandable. Turian activity problematic in current situation, but manageable. Hm, actually may be beneficial. What is the status of our own analysis?"

The data trees disappear, replaced by a rotating constellation of lights and nebulous mists. Magenta lines criss cross, panning across thousands of light years until they settle on one particular bright star.

"Just completed. Very little data, but we've managed to isolate the coordinates where the recordings were made to within half a light year."

"Good. Have coordinates deployed into Turian networks. Better to let them take the lead. Keep a watch of course. Put STG on alert, ready to follow up. Should have results soon. Although...”

“Raider vessel?”

“Yes, hostile contact with alien megalith. Uncertain if result of ill advised aggression or otherwise. Still, interesting to note that Verge is well traveled. Raider may not be first contact with megalith. Hm. Unknown if friendly contact is possible, but cannot dismiss out of hand. If so, curious about current situation. Individual, grouping, maybe even large organization may already be aware of megalith and made contact.”

A pause, figures frozen in thought before one breaks the silence with three words.

“Should know soon.”

**********

Work on this is pretty tentative, so if you've got any criticisms and what not, let me know so I can patch it into the overall work.

I can practically hear Mordin sucking in a breath to speak those last three words.

Burn the ne-

SQEEEE!

On the one hand, it's not summoning the sun so i am "le sad"

On the other hand. It's Unbound So i am "le happy"

Altogether? I'll take what i can get and it is, as always, really damn good.

I like it but it feels more like an interlude than a chapter. Nothing much really happens despite everything going on. it is almost all reactionary to what went on before.

Well, it's part of the whole taking place at the moment. The next bit will cover SCIENCE!, resources, population growth and manufacturing.

It's a whole let better then nothing though. Squeee! One of my favorite stories I thought was dead just updated!

I must say while this is quite good, i would like to see Iron Rebirth. It was a fantastic read and im sad that where are only just got throug Purgatory.

*grins* Definitely cool.

Wow, that Anton guy really needs to take a chill pill or he'll have a heart attack when he finds out that the Quarians have cracked a planet to sap it of it's resources and build a fleet consisting only of Dreadnoughts...which isn't that hard considering Homeworld Technology. If I remember correctly Homeworld ships needed something like four reactors just to power their Ion Cannons and another two for the FTL engine, and that's just for a Hiigaran battlecruiser...Man the Geth are fucked! With this tech Garrel will be able to galvanize the Quarians to retake their homeworld once the Dreadnoughts start rolling off the shipyards! I know, I know I'm getting ahead of myself but that IS a likely outcome.

And kill all the good Geth like Legion - winner of SB's Most Favourite Robotic Flashlifght Competition - four years in a row? FU*KING NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

The Mary Sue that is Shepard will prevent that! Also. I FUCKING HATE HAN'GARREL!!! I have so Renegade Interupted him in ME3.

/capslock

Well yeah but you cannot deny that the Quarians have an axe to grind with the Geth, and saying that 'They Started It' will just not cut it considering they were exiled from their homeworld and rendered into this pathetic state that if you sneeze on an unmasked Quarians there is a chance for them to die. Plus, as you saw the Geth did join the Reapers in order to survive with the full knowledge that they'll get turned into their slaves. So no, the Geth really aren't that good.

As it stands the Quarians are much like the Kushani peoples of Kharack questing to return to Hiigara, if I'm not mistaken the Bentusi WERE the ones who gave the Kushani their innitital leg up? History repeats itself in a Galaxy 25,000,000 Light Years away from home it would seem.

Heh, the major powers are concerned about the Bentusi ship, despite only having a few seconds of footage of it. Imagine the bricks which will be shat when somebody discovers exactly what happened and that the Quarian Migrant Fleet had a front row seat for the whole thing.

Ah, it's the FTL that needs four reactors to run. No solid word on the power requirements for Ion Cannons, just that they take up a lot of power, as expected.

My bad, so that's what I think is a limiting factor in ship construction - there is a lot of maintenance and then there are crew requierments, Hiigara can't really field that many ships but on the other hand the Vaygr had so many ships that I ended up destroyign hundreds of Capitals and maybe a thousand frigates or more by the time I finished playing Homeworld 2.

Since you edited - I hated the Geth for giving in to the Reapers, they may have been Most Favoirte Robotic Flashlight Competition winners four years in a roll but in the end they SOLD OUT! Even if you destroy the Heretics they STILL sell out the Galaxy for the Reapers.

The Quarian goverment were transcendent a**holes. You really should watch the dialogues in ME2 and ME3 about how the entire Morning War begun. Do you know it all escalated because many Quarians were protecting to-them-assigned platforms, saying they are sentient and that their are their children - and that the Quarian Goverment ordered them to be executed and killed on sight like the "Toaster sympathisers" they were in their opinion on charges of treason during a declared martial law? That was the moment the Geth Collective 'lost it' for the first time out of two and brought out of storage all the nice toys the Quarian Navy and the Army equiped their military grade platforms with.

Also, why I have a strange feeling that these Bentusis got the pacifism kicked out of them by the Beast.

Sorry. Even the Kushan/Higarans didn't exterminate the Taidani for what they did to them *cough three millenia long exile on a shithole of a planet and the killing of billions of their citiyens before that cough*. They just threw them off Higara and destroyed the strangehold they had over the Galaxies politics.

Who wants to bet that the moment the upgraded Quarian fleet jumps into Ranochs system there will be a Bentusi battlegroup helping a fleet of 100+ Geth 2km+ Super Dreds *that the Geth DO have as per ME canon* kick Quarian a** the same way that Reaper did in canon. Yeah. I know Déjà vu is a bitct.

Only because the Quarians were absolutely not capable to accept any type of reasoning. The Geth tried to communicate with them but the Quarians refused to even open comm chanells. This was the only option present at the moment - and Shepard-Commander was not there. While all this was happening, Han'Gerel run totally roughshot over the heads of the Admirality board and utterly marginalized the civilian Conclave.

I present you Han'Gerrel, the Migrant Fleets very own Helena Cain.

EDIT

I think you're overreacting. I don't remember the War escalating because the Geth saw the ones that tried to proterct them were killed. Heck we only saw one of them being killed and another knocked out and arrested. I don't remember mass executions of treason. Are there Codex Entries or is this your temper speaking? I also cannot remember, were there Military Platforms? It sounds like a smart thing to do, less casualties that way but do we know how many there actually were? Stuff like that? The Morning War is still very muddy and we are sorely lacking in details.

The Kushani didn't have the power to take on the Taiidani Empire on their own, even with the 200 Ion-Cannon Frigates they were still too few, in the end it didn't matter, the Empire was very poorly run and it fractured into the Taiidani Republic and Empire. I am sure a lot of Kushani wanted further revenge but decided to focus creating some semblence of life.

And...yeah, the Bentusi helping the Geth thing? No, really? No, just no. This is really your temper and hate speaking, in the end you have to look at it this way - both the Quarians and the Geth tried to commit genocide, the Geth succeded and the Quarians have been stranded in space for 300 years with the only hope for a life outside their ships and enviormental suits being their Homeworld. And WHEN did they try and communicate with the Quarians? It surely wasn't in the game, in the Codex perhaps? I have no memory of that event.

In the end you must remember that unlike say the Asari or Humans, the Quarians can only live a full life, outside their encounter suits and any sort of danger of their ship failing and dieing from exposure by returning to their Homeworld and the Geth control it at the moment. It'd be a wonder if, in their haste, the Qurians even had news recordings of what exactly happened during the oppening days of the Morning War. Chillax, Durabys if it all ends well the Quarians won't attack the Geth...but they most likely will...and they'll most likely win alone this time. Such is the reality when it comes to Crossovers, everything changes.

First - Why are you so blindly sure that the Geth are going to be destroyed? Did the author say that he is going to kill the Geth and I missed it? I never advocated the destruction of the Quarian or the Geth. Both of them need to be humiliated. Hubris helps to build bridges.

Second - the Geth could have killed all the Quarians but decided against it during the Morning War and left the Migrant Fleet be.

Third - Bentusi - being more synthetic then organic and having a mind structure similar to the Reapers and the Geth will MORE then strongly object to this. As was said in HW and HW2. 'Everything is heard in the Void and we always listen.' and it also seems that the Beast actually sucessfully kicked the isolationism out of them.

Fourth - just read this.

Fifth - What hate and temper speaking? I am interested how did you come to this conclusion. Again I didn't advocate the death of either the Quarians or the Geth.

Sixth - Don't you need for an actual case of genocide an extinction happening? Nothin like that happened to the Quarians. It was only Quarian pride from saving them. If their situation was that dire then they could agree to become a Turian client race and bingo.

EDIT

Just to clarify this one thing. PDA tech, at least the ones being sold to the Quarians, does not cornucopia technology make. Make no mistake, it's completely revolutionary technology in a field that's often costly, dangerous and time consuming even with robo-miners and automated refineries (PDAs extract and store matter in a pure state). It vastly improves their ability to extract resources in a timely manner with zero or near zero wastage, something the Volus would kill for, but that's about it.

Not to say that there isn't the kind of technology to mass produce dreadnoughts in minutes, or that appropriately designed PDAs can't, but right now the Quarians don't have it.

... and will only get a more primitive version of the Stereo-Lythical Nano-Assembly technology when they prove their worth to the Bentusi down the line. In a similar way Earth in the SG-verse proved itself to the Asgard.

It should also be mentioned that Mass Effect aren't too shabby on ship-building times, the Curcible for instance. Well that's just a an assumption on my part, we don't know how long the invasion lasted but we do see some fast building, ya'know? If the Quarians really put their backs into it and maybe build themselves a large shipyard/space station they'll have the base of operations they'll need. From there? Well you know how it is from there.

Well...I...did not actually imply you were advocating their destruction. That was me writing my own thoughts.

Only that the Council will detect these efforts. Didn't you read the last update? The moment the Quarians begin such build-up its Ouch!-time in the form of several Turain Peacekeeping fleets.

So what did you want to commincate through to me, please?