Chapter Text
Kari’toren vas Fa'alavelave had tracked down many errant quarian pilgrims over the years.
It was a vital role, some young quarians found themselves far over their heads, either overestimating themselves or underestimating the galaxy's ability for cruelty. Their eagerness to prove themselves in their pilgrimage leading to them taking risks that put them in grave danger.
That was where Kari and her team came in, to bring these lost ones home again, or at the very least bring closure for their families.
However, this one was an interesting case.
“We’re a month from the nearest relay.” Her navigator, Noir'galen, complained. “What was Jyrn thinking going this far out? Hoping to find a pre-FTL civilization? Lost prothean relics?”
“Probably.” Her first officer, Taki’huvi commented, tilting his head. “Maybe he was trying to find an undocumented relay?”
“You’re sure we’re still following the trail?” Hora’deshaan checked with Noir.
“Would you stop asking that?” Noir grumbled. “And yes, we are.”
“Can you blame me?” The navigator didn’t respond, simply going back to his controls.
“At this point I’m half wondering if the reason for Jyrn’s lack of contact is because he’s still on his way back.” Kari joked, smiling under her helmet.
“Would be nice to have a happy ending after the last two.” Hora admitted. “Poor Vare. There’s a reason most pilgrims try to avoid Krogan space.”
As days slipped by and the crew continued their trek through deep space, Taki brought a strange occurrence to her attention.
“Would you take a look at these two star maps captain?” Two apparently identical images appeared on the screen.
Kari narrowed her eyes as she searched them, trying to find whatever difference Taki had noticed. Eventually, she spotted it, at least so she thought. “There, that star is gone.”
“Yes, but it’s not the only one.” He pointed at a few other stars, less bright in the original image but relatively close to the one she had spotted. “While it’s hard to tell this far away, my scanners seem to be implying well… black holes.”
“Huh, that many so close together?” She was no astrophysicist but it sounded unusual. “Guess we could pass it along when we get home, I’m sure the salarians would love to study something like that.”
“To tell the truth we might want to take it to the Council itself.” That caught her attention. “Based on the star maps we have of this area those stars should be nowhere near the end of their life span, in fact those systems were tagged to have planets in the garden zone.”
“What are you thinking then?” She leaned back. “Some cosmic anomaly?”
“Possibly… or… It’s just as I said. All of those systems had planets that could potentially support life.”
“You think some undiscovered space-faring civilization screwed up so much they turned their suns into black holes?”
“It’s just curious that some stars, like these two, in the same area that didn’t have any planets that met the known qualifications, seem to be continuing their lifespans as normal,” Taki explained his thought process.
Kari rolled the information around in her mind a bit. “I think trying to take it to the council is jumping the gun a bit. Assuming we could even get an audience. We’ll pass it along like I said but I’ll point out what you noticed. Let me know if you discover anything else.”
The days passed and they continued following Jyrn’s trail. Kari soon realized Taki might get more information than he needed. They were coming, not quite dangerously, but perhaps concerningly close to the collection of black holes.
Noir had taken to calling it Tosh’s Trash Compactor as a joke, named after an ancient philosopher-king from Rannoch’s distant past.
Finally, after about seven weeks of space travel, they tracked Jyrn’s ship to a curious looking ringed planet.
“What the heck happened to it?” Hora asked, looking at the damage to the crust and the rings wrapping the planet.
“Unstable core?” Noir suggested as he started fiddling with his console, trying to find Jyrn’s exact location. “Or a meteor.”
“Taki send the probe down.” Kari directed her second in command. “I doubt we’ll be making any other stops, might as well use it now.”
“Launching,” Taki confirmed and she watched a small blur of light launch toward the planet from the Fa'alavelave.
“I’ve found Jyrn’s ship,” Noir announced, getting their attention. “It seems to be adrift in the rings.”
That didn’t bode well. “Hora, are you picking up anything?”
The communication expert frowned. “More than I should be. There’s a lot of interference. Let me try to clean it up.”
“Captain,” Taki called as the probe’s findings began coming in. “The planet has numerous artificial structures and what appear to be large population centers dotting the surface.”
For a moment the rest of the crew forgot their tasks and stared at him. Finally Noir cursed and Hora redoubled her efforts to clear up the interference as Kari joined Taki at his station.
“How big a population are we talking?”
“Hundreds of millions, possibly a billion…” Taki frowned. “There are no life signs though.”
Kari’s heart plummeted. This was not first contact with a new species, they were just here to see their tomb. “Analysis?” She requested softly.
“Based on the probe’s preliminary readings it seems the atmosphere is not in its natural state. I’d say whatever calamity that created the rings also rendered the world uninhabitable. There are still a lot of electronic signatures down there though.”
“No one left to turn the lights out.” She sighed and shook her head.
“Some of them are all but dead, but there are a few hot spots left…” Taki frowned. “Impressively so, almost like they’re still populated…”
The past few minutes had been a true rollercoaster of emotions huh? “AI?”
“I can’t say for sure but I also can’t rule it out. We’d need to go down to check or receive some sort of signal.”
“Hora anything? Are we receiving any direct transmissions?”
“No, most of the traffic seems to be dead. But I am picking up a faint quarian signal!”
“Noir bring us in towards Jyrn’s ship. Hora play whatever you’re getting.”
Painfully loud static erupted over the intercom. “…any… do-… planet is… -know… -AI-… geth…” the static seemed to screech. “-o. NO…”
After another puff of static a garbling repeating sound that almost resembled laughter filled the rest of the message before abruptly stopping.
“…I’m going to take that as confirmation of AI presence.” Taki declared and Kari couldn’t help but agree with his deduction.
The first thing Kari did after they calmed down a little was order Taki to recalibrate the scanners to alert them if a power source came close to the ship. Whatever had attacked Jyrn could still be out in the rings. Regardless of whether there was some hunter AI in the skies, Kari was fully convinced there was an AI presence on the planet below.
It was probably for the best that Jyrn’s ship was in orbit, there was no way Kari would willingly allow anyone down there. That didn’t stop her small crew from theorizing amongst themselves.
“I heard “geth” in the message pretty clearly,” Hora confirmed. “I’m having trouble getting anything else but he definitely said geth.”
“There’s been no geth sightings for years now,” Taki told her. “And you only picked up the one quarian signal? Even if the geth have massively changed their systems the base should still resemble our transmissions.”
“I doubt it’s the geth.” Noir asserted as they readied their small hangar for Jyrn’s ship. “More likely the kid met the local murder machines and immediately thought of the horror stories.”
Kari thought that most likely herself but didn’t encourage the debate. “As soon as we get home this needs to go straight to the citadel. A civilization of violent AI that wiped out their creators needs to be known and dealt with before it grows too powerful.”
“Yes because the citadel is doing so much to stop the geth from growing more powerful,” Noir muttered darkly.
“I’m not sure they did wipe out their creators…” Taki admitted having had more time to think about it. “Maybe they did but it could be the cataclysm wiped out the organics and left them on their own. They might not even be real AI, just self-sufficient machines continuing to carry out their programming.”
“They should have degraded by now in that case.” The hangar opened up and the tow cables were launched dragging Jyrn’s small ship inside. “And that doesn’t explain… that .” Kari didn’t need to elaborate.
“Malfunctioning security drone?” Taki didn’t sound too convinced himself.
Jyrn’s ship was in abysmal shape. It wasn’t a cutting-edge piece of technology to begin with, just a cockpit and a small cabin to move around in. It had taken a massive beating from the rocks in orbit, but the side of the ship was ripped open, like some massive creature had torn the metal open to get inside.
Kari and Taki, (the two with any combat training) carefully approached the wrecked ship. While it was unlikely whatever had attacked Jyrn was still inside it was better to be safe than sorry.
They scanned the interior, finding it almost entirely empty, save for some smaller pieces of debris from the rings that had become stuck inside. “No body.” Taki noted.
“Must have been sucked out when the ship got attacked.” Kari’s light lingered on a wall stain. It certainly looked like blood, but wouldn’t it have been sucked out with the body in that case?
They gave the all-clear and Hora joined Taki in trying to retrieve the ship’s black box. Hopefully, that could give them some answers about what happened to Jyrn.
“What’s the call captain?” Noir asked as they let the other two work. “Should we start booking it back to familiar space?”
“A tempting suggestion.” She smirked a little but it faded quickly. “Not yet, I want the probe to finish its scan first. The more information we can take back the better. That being said… stay at your post, just in case.”
“Will do.”
Somehow the next hour moved at a crawl yet passed in the blink of an eye. Noir had the engines ready to take them out of orbit at a moment's notice while Kari took Taki’s usual spot, her hands hovering over the weapons systems. Again, just in case.
Every horror story she’d ever heard about the geth was flooding through her mind right now. It wasn’t helpful in the least but it was all she could think about. What really happened to this planet? Had the people been wiped out by their creations? Had some managed to escape into space like the quarians had?
Or had Taki been right and the planet been wiped out in the blink of an eye? The machines left over with no one left to serve.
After that odd eternity, she almost jumped when Taki contacted her. “Captain, we’ve managed to extract the ship’s memory from the black box and learned a few things.”
“What can you tell me?” She glanced at the probe’s scan, almost done. They’d be far away from this rock soon.
“Jyrn didn’t keep a journal so I’m afraid we don’t have his exact reasoning, but! I have found a few drafts of what seems to be a presentation speech. Likely something he was preparing for the Admiralty Board after his pilgrimage.”
“Does he at least have a compelling thesis?” Noir asked sarcastically.
“It looks like I can’t take credit for discovering the anomaly with the black holes. Jyrn was something of a stargazer and picked up on it not long before his pilgrimage started. From the sound of it, he wanted to document the cause and bring back his research.”
“Not unheard of, I had a cousin who studied the Mass Relays as his pilgrimage. I think his research is actually in the prototype stage of upgrading some engines in the fleet.” Kari nodded along. “So he came out here trying to figure it out?”
“It seems like it, but I’m not sure why he stopped here specifically, like I said, no journal. Hora managed to retrieve the full distress message, but it’s more of a warning than a cry for help.”
Kari and Noir shared a look. “Play it.”
The intercom crackled a bit and Jyrn’s voice came through again, a bit clearer now.
“If anyone can hear me, don't land . This planet is death. I don’t know if it was an AI uprising like the geth or- sorry just stay away! I shouldn’t have come out this far. They’re deadly an-“
Jyrn was cut off by the sound of ripping metal disturbing, almost childlike giggling.
“No! NO! GET AWAY! GET-“ Jyrn’s words ended with the sound of breaking glass and a terrible gurgling sound. It was quickly followed by squelching and cracking overridden by a horrible cackle.
“…Taki I don’t think that was some leftover security drone.” Noir managed, his hand shaking over the lever to launch them into motion.
“Really.” The first officer deadpanned over the communicator. “No, it seems obvious whatever is down there is actively malicious towards biological life. But this is the curious bit as well…”
“That didn’t sound like he was attacked while in orbit.” Kari put together. There had been no sound of decompression, something had broken into his ship and attacked him, he hadn’t been sucked out.
“No, and checking the ship's engine logs, while there’s confirmation of him landing on the planet there’s no record of a launch being initiated.”
“Then how did his ship get back into space?” Kari asked, utterly befuddled.
“I wish I had an answer for you.”
Kari took a deep breath and shook her head. Too many questions, not enough answers. And she wasn’t going to get any unless they went down to the planet to look around.
But she wasn’t going to risk the lives of her crew on what was probably a suicide mission. “Alright, get back up to the bridge. As soon as the probe’s done we’re getting out of here.”
“See you soon.” The line went dead and Kari leaned back.
“Spooky stuff,” Noir commented. “And weird. The stories of the geth always described them as emotionless killing machines. They didn’t take pleasure in the slaughter, they just did it. That sounded like it was enjoying itself. Or at least programmed to act like it is.”
“Well, whatever is down there isn’t the geth.” And hopefully too far away to be dangerous to anyone in Citadel Space. “Maybe th-“
She never got a chance to finish the thought as the proximity alarm started going off. Kari swore at herself for getting distracted and checked the radar. A fast-moving object was approaching them from the planet.
“Noir evasive actions!” She ordered and primed the guns, the shields had already been on to protect from asteroids. The ship rolled out of the way of the object and it shot past them. The screens around Kari came to life to give her a better view for aiming. Fa'alavelave’s weapons were mostly to discourage pirates and deal with meteors but today she got to put down a malevolent AI.
The object didn’t alter course even as they evaded it, in fact, it didn’t seem to even acknowledge them, continuing out of the planet's gravity and into open space. As she got a better look at it Kari wasn’t even sure it was a ship. It was a cylindrical capsule with an engine and some metal legs that almost looked like tentacles hanging off.
They hadn’t been able to get a deep scan but there were no apparent weapons on it, nor did it have any kinetic shields. Curious.
No life signs either but she hadn’t been expecting those to begin with.
“After it!” She ordered and Noir punched it. As soon as she had it in her crosshairs she started opening fire.
Now it started to move, jerking around as the guns trailed explosions around it.
Taki and Hora finally made their reappearance on the bridge. “What happened?”
“Projectile launched from the planet, no life signs, it’s heading into space and I don’t feel like letting those mechanical sociopaths spread.” Kari summarized, taking her hand off the trigger and forcing herself to calm down and focus,as well as to let Noir to close the distance.
“We’re getting a transmission!” Hora announced and frowned. “No voice, just text and… I can’t read this.”
“Alien language?” Taki guessed looking over her shoulder. “It’s only two words?”
“You can look at the CPU and start translating soon,” Kari promised as Noir brought them closer. The ship was surprisingly fast for its size. A deep breath and three shots.
The first hit the side and sent the capsule spiraling, the second hit the engine and it went dead, the third ruptured the ship entirely and it exploded in a shower of debris.
For a few moments, the crew was silent and Kari was about to congratulate herself on a job well done.
Then, just as she let herself relax, another alarm went off.
“Hull breach in the hangar!” Taki called as he checked.
“How?” Noir asked, “The shields are up right?”
“Never took them offline,” Kari confirmed and brought up the security feed. Jyrn’s ship was still in there, but there was a gash in the hangar door, like something had torn through it. Warnings continued to beep as the lower decks had their air sucked out.
She leaned in, scanning the feed for anything else out of place. Then a glowing X appeared on the screen and she jerked back as the feed cut to static.
Without hesitation, she stood and went to the weapons locker. “Taki you’re with me, Noir you have the bridge. Hora we’re going to keep open coms. Seal the bridge and be ready to decompress the rest of the Fa'alavelave on my order.”
“Captain?” Noir’s normal attitude had faded into something a bit more nervous. “Are you sure?’
“Like I said, I’m not letting any AI spread to the rest of the galaxy. If we can’t put it down you two need to inform the fleet.”
As the door shut behind them Kari and Taki carefully moved through the corridor. “Tactical analysis?” She prompted him.
“It seems able to tear through hulls without too much difficulty,” Taki noted as they cleared the first room, the kitchen. “The fact it survived your shot implies that it is fairly durable.”
“I’d feel better if we knew what it looked like. Do you think the X was part of the chassis or some sort of program it comes equipped with?”
“Since the rest of our cameras are working…” Taki started but Hora put a close to that.
“Camera in the corridor outside the hangar just went dead, same way as the first.”
“Hrm.” Taki grunted. “Still, it’s not doing them all at once, I’d say it’s taking them out as it traverses the ship.”
“Wonderful.”
By the time they got to the lift every camera on the lower deck was out. “Hora are you picking up any chatter?”
“No transmissions but ours, internal or otherwise.” The communications officer confirmed.
“Single drone? Or unit? Or, whatever you get the idea.” Noir huffed.
“Captain going down there is inadvisable,” Taki told her and she agreed but wasn’t much pleased with the idea of waiting for whatever it was to come up.
Before she could make a decision the lift was called and began descending.
“…is it using the elevator?” A part of her felt incredulous but then kicked herself. Of course it was using the elevator, how else would it get up here? Not like the vents were big enough for anything to crawl through.
“Guess it’s coming to us.” Taki lowered his gun for a moment and entered the crew quarters, seeing his plan Kari followed and they dragged a few pieces of furniture to act as cover.
“Do you want me to halt it?” Noir asked over the com.
“No, at least if it’s using the elevator it’s not trying to tear its way through the ship. It also gives us a target.” Kari explained as they took positions and aimed at the lift as it began to return.
“Open fire the instant that door opens.” She ordered Taki, her own finger hovering over the trigger of her rifle.
With a deceitfully pleasant ding, the lift slid open and was immediately riddled with bullets as she and Taki let loose their arsenal.
The hall was filled with the sound of gunfire and Kari didn’t let go of the trigger until her gun overheated. She hissed and pulled her hand from the hot metal, able to feel it even through her glove. “Ceasefire!” She shouted to Taki as she narrowed her eyes at the smoke-filled elevator.
Taki fired a last couple of shots before complying, taking the opportunity to reload his clip, his hands moving even as his gaze remained fixed on the elevator.
Nobody moved or spoke as the ventilation cleared the smoke, revealing a damaged but otherwise empty lift.
“Where is it?” Kari nearly snapped, struggling to control her frustration. They’d, no she had let it trick them. It sent the elevator up to test what would happen.
“We don’t have a good view, what happened? ” Noir called over the communicator.
“Empty lift, it must hav-“ Taki was cut off as the floor of the lift exploded and a shape shot into view.
Kari started shooting again but the machine was already rushing down the hall. Blades of steel folded in front of it as their bullets began raining down. “Hold still!” Kari cursed at it.
It flipped over their heads as it reached their makeshift barricade, showing a shocking amount of acrobatic ability. Kari looked up to see the same X she’d seen on the camera across some sort of visor, a metal mouth grinning with fanged steel teeth.
Also, its arm was a gun pointing right at her.
Bullet fire riddled her kinetic shields and she fell back, toppling over the barricade as her shields were almost wholly depleted.
Taki remained on target, turning and continuing to fire even as his captain went down. It switched focus as bullets tore into its frame, but that did little to slow it down as it lunged forward, the other arm wielding a blade that sliced through the barrel of his gun.
He stumbled back and tried to use it as a club to beat back the AI but it tackled him, planting the gun arm against his helmet and opening fire again.
Kari wasn’t sure which was loudest between the bullet fire, shattering glass, and her scream of rage and horror. Her shield had barely started recharging but she was already on her feet blasting her friend’s killer.
She watched with satisfaction as her shots tore through the thing's head, the visor going dark and an arm coming off as her bullets ripped through the shoulder. But like before her gun started overheating and she had to pause.
Letting her rifle cool she pulled out a pistol and pointed it at the dying machine for some well-earned catharsis. She barely managed to take aim before nearly dropping the gun with horror.
Before her eyes, liquid metal dripped from the ruined shoulder, forming the shape of a new arm. Bullets clattered against the ground as the same substance filled the holes in the machine’s head and the visor came back on. Instead of the X, a triangle flashed across the glass.
“Captain what’s happening? What’s-“ She didn’t have an answer for Noir as she started firing the pistol and pulled up her rifle, firing with less aim but more bullets between the two guns.
A few shots ripped through the nightmare machine but in a blur of motion, the triangle turned to eyes and then back to the X as it used bladed wings to drag Taki’s corpse into the air to shield it from her gunfire.
Then it started rushing forward again, throwing Taki’s body at Kari, the limp form pinning her to the ground. Her arms stuck uselessly under her first officer Kari realized this was the end. For her at least. But…
“NOIR DO IT NOW! DEC-“ She managed to scream before a sharp leg came down on her helmet, finishing her shield and skewering her mouth, tearing her face apart with broken glass.
As her vision faded and she looked at the metal face of the machine, her last thought was not of regret or anger. But of sheer confusion.
‘Why does that robot have pigtails?’
“NOIR DO IT NOW! DEC-“
“Captain?!” Noir shouted into Hora’s microphone where he’d been huddled with her, watching the feed from the hallway. He saw Taki go down but hoped perhaps naively that his shield had protected him from the bullets.
That were fired point-blank. At his head.
“Kari please respond!” He begged as the murderous machine turned its head away from their captain and towards the nearest camera. The angle was off but it sure looked like it had stomped her head in.
He really hoped the angle was just really off.
“Kari!” He desperately called again. The robot bent down and made a few motions with its arms before standing, holding something.
“Yes hello, this is alien scum to alien scum. Please open the door. Special delivery from JCJenson!” A voice that sounded far too alive to come from a machine spoke over the communicator in an alien language.
“Noir- Noir we have to…“ Hora started but he didn’t hear her as he realized what it was the robot had picked up.
Kari’s head.
“Damn it.” He whispered and rushed across the bridge to Kari’s terminal, bringing himself to the command console with a few swift keystrokes.
The bridge door shook as something impacted it and the ship seemed to rock. Hora yelped ducking for cover. Smaller impacts soon followed as bullet fire riddled the reinforced metal.
“Warning: Decompression of the ship is-“ He skipped through the warnings and entered the security codes as tears began spilling down his face.
“DAMN IT!” He howled, letting his fury and grief loose with his fist as he pounded the now flashing button.
The ship rocked and the bullet fire stopped as bulkheads burst, all the air being sucked into space along with anything that wasn’t securely nailed down. With blurry eyes, he watched cargo, furniture, and personal items drift past the view screen.
Shaking with sorrow he collapsed into Kari’s chair and started sobbing. They’d been more than a crew, they were friends, almost a family. Grouped together since almost right after their pilgrimages. And now half of them are dead. Gone forever at the hands of some psychotic doll.
He felt Hora come over and her arms wrapped around him, he could hear her own muffled sobbing, much quieter than his near howls of grief but no less miserable.
They stayed like that for a while, mourning their friends. Eventually, they managed to pull themselves together enough to actually start planning.
“I’ll do my best to reseal the upper decks.” He managed, breathing deeply. “Hora cut power to everything except life support and engines. After that we’ll need to take stock of what survived, hopefully we’ll have enough to make it back to the Aephus or another planet.”
She nodded a bit numbly, stepping back to start rerouting power but went rigid with a gasp as she caught sight of the view screen.
Noir followed her gaze, the sight filling him with horror and the closest thing he’d ever felt to true terror.
Latched onto the front of the bridge like an insect on a windshield was the thing that had just killed their friends. A sadistic smile spread across its features as the glowing X bore into them. It raised its hand, curling its fingers in a mocking wave.
Then the hand morphed into a glowing tube that looked disturbingly like the barrel of a weapon.
Hora let out a soft “no” and Noir leaped over terminals trying to get to Taki’s station, hoping he kept a spare weapon there.
He didn’t reach it. Nor did either of them have time to scream as the viewscreen exploded and they were sucked into space and the waiting claws of the Murder Drone.