412Author's Note: Okay, almost done this story. Almost done. Read, Review Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 98: The End of the Cycle Part 4
08M 16D 23H Until the Colossus Fires Finale
Saren and the rest of the Dragoons made planet fall on the little desert world the Tebrids were using as their outpost, some string of numbers that sounded more like a serial number than a name. It wasn't important, for the time being the Dragoons had been given the assignment of getting the people taken by a mixed Sathyrelian Tebrid force back and figuring out what had happened here that led to the destruction of the factory that was supposed to be set up here. As it so happens it was tasks that were much easier done than said.
"Keep them away from us!" The Tebrid growled in a synthesized voice while using a mechanical arm to push Samara and her daughters, stripped of their armour of course, towards the Dragoons. The Tebrid's facilities were already on track to being rebuilt as well.
"What exactly happened here?" Saren questioned looking at Samara suspiciously.
Thus the Justicar explained the situation, her discovery that the Tebrids had been suckered into the Instrument of Desire's plans and culture, and were now mass producing war machines as a result of their influence. This in turn led to the Jusitcar and her daughters launching a guerrilla campaign against the lot of them, which ended when the combination of her biotics and the Exotic plasma power source of the factory tore the whole place down. For now the Dragoon had simply opted to deal with the problem at its root.
"You." Saren felt no particular need to individualise the various Custodians when they were all hooked together into the same network anyway. "Bring the Tebrids into the simulation room and have them all hooked together."
"Is this wise? Having the masters retreat into a digital world is something that we've been trying to avoid for centuries." The Custodian asked sounding concerned.
"It's a little late for that." Saren stated bluntly. "Most Tebrids are already so badly disconnected from reality that they are just a single step away from going full simulation anyway. Right now the priority is to limit the possible damage that they are capable of doing, which means quarantine, while figuring out how we're going to deprogram them." Saren tapped his foot in annoyance. "Now!" And so thus the fate of the Tebrids was decided.
"What of the Sathyrelians?" The Custodians asked in an oddly familiar tone of voice.
"What about the-?" And then the Credit Chip dropped. "Of course you have! Why am I not surprised!?" It was way too early in the morning to be dealing with this madness. "Round them up and shove them into their own sim!" Which by this point in time was going to be standard protocol for taking prisoners.
08M 15D 21H Until the Colossus Fires Finale
After a day of work, the cock pit had been strapped to it's unintended vessel and now Tali was getting strapped inside. Tali had completed some heavy duty modifications, to herself and the cockpit. For the Cockpit, Tali had arranged for the same sophisticated control system and medical suite used for the Dragoon coffins to control the Nauts, in this case Tali would be using it mostly to keep herself alive while enhancing her control over the makeshift vessel. Surrounding herself with the inflatable padding? A measure to keep the Extreme G-Forces under more manageable circumstances, Tali figured she needed all the help she could get. Her own were more humble, nodes that would connect her nervous system and muscle groups directly to the controls for the Train Cars mass effect fields and theoretically allow the laser focused precision and speed needed to pilot a vehicle at such insane speeds, as added insurance she had downloaded several programs into her Grey box as well as memories of veteran pilots to help her manage this madness, and had her consciousness backed up, sans the booby trapped Gorthikian culture of course. For now Tali strapped in, tying herself down with the safety straps before popping the premature air bags and plugging into the controls before she breathed deep, letting the automated piloting programs and downloaded experience take over.
"Ready!"
Tali was fired down the tunnel like a cannon, in her vision she saw a map of the tunnels, saw years of fighter pilot programs thread the tunnels as she zoomed forward, slowing down only when she neared her target. The train reversed it's polarity, instead of being propelled along the tunnel the train car was now being attracted to the tunnel, forcibly reducing to the speed to merely little over the speed of sound as Tali caught up to the tail of the enemy.
"Preparing offensive weapons!"
Tali was pretty certain she was running on eight-percent Grey Box and twenty-percent Dextro Thorian substitute, but in her current circumstances she had more than enough. From the front of the train car dual particle beam cannons made their presence known, from the one on the left a beam fired modded with Pyro ammo feared a beam of super heated energy, from the one on the right a beam modded with cryo. The hull of the drill worm was hit with a mix of super hot and super cold, the hull of the drill making creaking noises as different parts of it's hull was simultaneously shrunk and expanded. Now throw onto that the intense stress being induced as a side effect of the drill's rampage and parts of the drill's hull was already popping off. That said there was something inside of the drill, something that could pick up the broken off pieces and hurl them at Tali like a shot from a rail gun. Luckily Tali's Grey Box was a top of the line model, Rare Crystal and she even customised it further using Astral Thread to drive up her reaction time even more.
"I'm not that easy you sea food platter!" Tali didn't even like sea food, she was a vegetarian.
"The drill seems to be following the path of the tunnel, I suspect that it's trying to make its way to my servers." The two of them passed through a security door that had a hole punched through it. "My efforts to stop it have proven less than successful."
"Well that's what I'm here for." Tali continued to work on weakening the hull of the enemy working on a nice hole leading inside of the enemy, luckily for her Tali's efforts to bore a way inside most of the worm's insides were hollow, either to conserve material for construction or to facilitate the moving of materials from the front to the back, that sadly was a bad thing as Tali had yet to make her way to any vital area's that she could eliminate with a decisive blow. "Fine you wanna do this the hard way you Bosh'tet Thresher Maw!" Tali prepared her main weapon, a Javelin Lancer which concentrated a strong Mass Effect Field onto a single canister of Exotic gas with a mine strapped to the front before firing it at the hole Tali had worked so hard to make. The Gas turned into plasma and detonated the Mass Effect Field, the worm snapped in two.
"I might've not thought this through very well." The debris of the shattered worm soon blocked off the tunnel.
"Left!" At once Tali steered into the first tunnel on the left avoiding the body of the worm. From there EDI sent Tali on an intercept course at full speed. "Be careful, you'll be coming in from the front this time."
"Fantastic." Tali muttered as she entered the tunnel, flying backwards as she was met by the worm. "DIE ALREADY YOU STUPID MACHINE!" Tali fired all of her weapons, heat and cold to weaken the materials of the drill head, followed up by Javelins to break through the defences with brute strength.
Tali had to pull an abrupt reverse as she nearly slammed into the wreckage of the very machine she had just destroyed and which now blocked off the tunnel.
"I will redirect traffic around the mess you just made." Tali breathed deep, and vomited as her insides wretched and she nearly went into a coma. "And direct your vessel to come and pick up your body. With luck it is not too late for medical treatment." Meaning the conscious part of Tali's body was the AI built up from her memories and the memories she downloaded into it, meaning that for the moment she's gone full AI.
"This is so wrong on so many levels." Tali concluded as she gradually lost the feeling in her body. "What are we doing with the drill?"
"My drones will clear away the obstruction within a few hours, additional transport for any prisoners still alive is already on the way but I doubt that they are still alive, and if still alive that the transport drones will get there in time." EDI explained as Tali already felt control over the ship being given over to the other AI. Now Tali could appreciate why all the Dragoon Mechs that they plug themselves into are the same shape as their actual bodies, AI Tali was getting a little too use to being a ship and found itself wondering how it was going to translate that back into a flesh and blood body. "Lovely. Get Chief Wrund on the line for me." AI Tali waited for what felt like an eternity but what her once organic Quarian brain in the back of her consciousness told her was an acceptably short period of time for an organic response.
"Hey boss. You get rid of the Not Thresher Maw?" Chief Wrund asked sounding pretty relaxed all things considered.
"As well as can be expected." And now Tali's voice had a synthetic tinge to it. Lovely thought that. "EDI is cleaning up the mess as we speak. What's the status with the Squids?"
"Disappointingly passive." The Clan chief grunted in response. "They didn't come here looking for a fight." Sounded like he was regretting not taking on the worm monster now. Well that made two of them. "Hold them until I'm back at the base. I am going to create a suitable environment to hold them in as soon as my injuries have healed." Which at the current progress shouldn't take much longer than getting back to base.
"There is another video chat waiting for you from the broker." EDI informed helpfully. "It's a conference call." Lovely.
"Let's wait until I'm in actual condition to take her call before we do so shall we?" Tali's newfound status as an AI did nothing to counter her snark.
08M 13D 16H Until the Colossus Fires Finale
"That's... rather annoying." It took a few days before stars and schedules aligned, before Liara could get into contact with the leadership of the Union. "Are you certain?" Admiral Hackett didn't like the idea that they Union has been sinking most of their resources and over a year and a half of their time into something that wasn't going to work.
"You're looking at memories extracted directly from my Grey Box." Liara asserted from the other end of the video call.
"I see that you made contact with a half formed Shroud Entity that has asserted that we'll lose against the Shroud Entities as is." Sparatus didn't like that idea. "Will we?" Sparatus turned to the Formless, the closest thing they have to an expert on how psionics affect reality.
"Before the break down? Yes. Like when you shake a sheet pulling on one part affects another. Now though? The Weave has been damaged, torn apart and stitched back together, it would break before it would do as you described." Mass produced rifts, not the best scenario but not the worst either.
"What if they had eight months?" Liara however countered the point. "Pardon?" The Formless looked confused, which for a faceless entity made out of energy and crystal like energy was quite impressive. "What if they fought us for another eight months? What if they forced a scenario where we were continuously forced to learn their skills, tactics and cultures for another eight months spreading their influence across our entire territory?"
The Tzynn are hunters, they operated either by themselves or in small groups to harass, sow havoc and assassinate.
The Gorthikians were intensely paranoid, they're hard to kill in a straight and have a unique biology that makes them extremely good with anything that gives or receives a signal.
The Gaians were slow moving but physically strong, the same tactics that were effective against say a rampaging Elcor would be effective against them as well, in addition their bodies were also full of nasty bio-chemical surprises as well so it was best to eliminate them from a distance and with extreme prejudice.
Finally the Sathyrelians were a aquatic race, they use psionics to experience sensations that others experience but rely on mech's with tanks full of water or telekinetic bubbles full of the stuff in order to move around on land.
This knowledge informs the tactics of the commanders and their soldiers on the front lines, and because of this they can reduce the potential casualties of their forces, however that same knowledge was a poison that pushes those who know of it into the hands of the Shroud Gods, as entering a state of total war would likely leave their forces vulnerable to at least three of them, four if they got particularly unlucky.
"Eight months is more than enough time, they will spread their influence across the galaxy, and then they'll turn our own weapon against us to solidify their grip. As things stand we'll lose." As things stand.
"Then what is this new Shroud entity proposing?" Admiral Hacket asked leaning backwards into his chair expecting a conversation that he wasn't going to like.
"It calls itself the End of the Cycle." A familiar voice spoke up from the side.
"It can fight the Four Tumours." Shepard appeared from the side. "Though it needs a little support at the moment."
"Tumours?" The Admiral asked with blatant suspicion.
"I call em as I see em, pretending that they're anything more than that benefits no one." Shepard gave a light shrug to the question as if what she said was obvious. "They're Tumours on the face of the Union's psyche, feeding off us and our thoughts, hoarding energy and doing jack-mot with it." Shepard then went on to explain the super cancer of the Galaxy. "The new one calls itself the End of the Cycle, the embodiment of the Union's absolute assurance that the Reaper's will be defeated. Not just the Union either, the Tumours and their forces are contributing to it too."
"The Shroud entities want the Reapers defeated too?" Admiral Hackett asked as he cocked a brow suspiciously. "To be more accurate they know that they will be defeated, so self assured of their power. The issue here is that no one can decide on how they will be defeated."
"I see." Xidre was mostly sitting off to the side as the interrogation continued, but now he provided his insight into the root of the problem. "Until now the plan has been to throw 'everything and anything we can at them in order to kill off as many of them as possible.' As such the thing that could ultimately defeat the Reaper's might be anything, for a long period of time we weren't even sure that it was going to be in this cycle." And even now the only reason why they were certain was that they knew that the Reapers wouldn't give the chance in the next cycle. "We take a single image of a being and imprint that across all life in the galaxy. Through this process we define what being that's ultimately going to go after the Reapers, send it after them, and pick off their leadership the Harbingers."
"Then we'll only have a few thousand Reapers left that needs dealing with." Admiral Hackett didn't like this plan.
"Exactly!" Shepard however did. "After we take out their leadership we offer to restore the races that have been turned into Reapers and get them on our side that way!" Shepard looked like she came up with the most brilliant idea ever. "Then we use the Reapers to finish off the Four Tumours!" They'll use the power of the Four Shroud entities to defeat the Reapers, then use the Reapers to defeat the Shroud.
"This plan has gaps in it." The crowd of high ranking officials knew the Union's stand on Reaper technology, let alone working with Reaper's themselves. "The Galaxy is changing my friends." Shepard knew that policy better than anyone. "We have for instance former Reaper's in the galaxy, in the form of the Tumours forces. In some cases they've even turned against their former masters and are engaging in open rebellion." The results on that front were mixed.
The Tzynn were hunting the World Eater, the Gorthikians would do anything to be free of the voices in their heads, the Gaians curse their former master and treat the transformations that have been inflicted upon them as they would a curse, while the Sathyrelian's don't like taking orders from anyone. They weren't quite what you'd call 'allies' yet, but they were at least the enemy of their enemies.
"We knock out the Harbingers, let the Animator into the Ranks of the Reapers, they either start taking each other or themselves out of they start trying to crack themselves open to try and return to their pre-reaper state, and that's where we come in!"
"With Conduit based technology we can revert them to their original forms with ease. In exchange we'll require the methods to seal and neutralise the four Shroud entities, then we can start working on turning them back to their old selves once the Galaxy is no longer at risk of being converted into a explosive orgy of psionics and Rifts." The more scientifically minded of the group of officials wondered if such a thing was possible, the strategically inclined recognised the potential worth, and how bad their own situation had gotten, the politically minded though recognised the dangers of the situation for what it is.
"This must never be made known to the public." Udina stated bluntly. "In fact, if any of us here are not absolutely necessary to pull this scheme off then they need to be mind wiped: including myself." That was just how serious this situation actually was. "Your efficiency must be comparable to FTL engines, this entire affair must be finished and swept underneath the rug before anyone gets the chance to object to it." There were many voices of complaints to the idea, those who wanted every Reaper dead, but there were also realists here, and people who wanted to survive. The kind of people that knew that even with the number of Reapers they had wiped out already that they did not stand a chance if it came down a war of attrition, there was still that many of them, doubly so if they then on top of that had to deal with the Shroud entities sticking their noses into things to mess things up in their favour. These conflicts needed to be over with and soon.
"And what do you require to pull off this latest act of madness?" That was the biggest question that the crowd of officials needed answering.
"As a start? Them." Shepard pointed to the Formless. "And their Crystal Spire. That's where we're going to have to put it, and unless you guys have a big fat War Crime stashed around somewhere we're going to need their help to build it fast. After that? Them." Shepard indicated the Draconic official next. "And their own big scary god. Something people know already eats Reapers and can kill more if she has to. And after that? As much fire power as you guys can pool together, because if the Tumours figure out what we're doing they're not going to be happy."
With that the officials received the details of the 'plan' as it were and then moved on with their time as they engaged in the near endless debate of politics and trying to politely not offend anyone/offend people in ways they couldn't retaliate.
08M 13D 16H Until the Colossus Fires Finale
It was a target the Four Shroud entities had been working towards as soon as they had learned of it's existence, and now they had gotten their mitts on one through their constant battles with the Union.
The creature was born proud and arrogant, the child of a god born being worshipped.
It was a born hunter, prowling the galaxy in search of enemies and food and had acquired plenty of both from squabbling with their own forces.
It was lazy, outside of amusing itself by hunting their own forces the creature prefers to laze about in the void at its outpost.
And now it was cautious and paranoid, having suffered one too many surprise attacks from the Four Shroud Entities and from it's own people after they were hacked by the Shroud Entities and succumbed to worship.
Through their telepathic attacks the creature learned their culture, their history, their memes, the DNA of the soul of the Four Shroud entities. It was young too, primed and vulnerable to their manipulations.
The bones were among the first to receive alterations from the Shroud Entities, altered with the characteristics of the Lithoids. The Teeth turned purple with the Rare Crystals of the Hive, while the rest became part of the larger skeleton aiding in digestion through the production of Unstable Mots and Exotic Gas. The Skeleton broke and splintered, nerves were replaced with Brain Fruit as flesh turned cancerous in some parts. The Creature was driven mad, attacking it's own allies and care takers in search of raw material to fuel his growth! The Thorian had already smoothly integrated itself into it's biology, From the Tumours new body parts started to bud, fore limbs, torso, heads.
Each Head's colour reflected the colours of the Four Shroud Entities, Eater Red, Instrument Gold, Composer Green and Whisperer Blue while the rest of the body turned black with white dots resembling a starry sky. He was fed Eezo and his body mutated to compensate, acquiring the ability to manipulate gravity on top of it's existing high psionic power and heavily mutated biology.
On this day, Dahaka, son of Thuban and Champion of the Gods of the Shroud was born, a monster resembling a mighty four headed serpent. Each head specialised in a different form of attack, Fire, Lightning, Ice and Disease while at the same time lashing with psionic might and biotic power. Now that it had wiped out it's former worshippers Dahaka had his marching orders. At the centre of the galaxy was a fortress, a citadel built from crystal by ancient explorers and was now their last outpost in a universe that was inherently hostile to their existence, from here it was possible to see the entire weave of the Galaxy and control it, and once they have it they will be able to complete their ascension to Godhood, defeat their hated enemy and then divide the galaxy at their whim.
And with that, a new battle soon began.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: True, I liked Liara's relationship in the first game.
Monster King: I'm gonna finish this story in a few more chapters you know.