2 Chapter 1: Keelah se'lai

While we were getting to the pirate base, for the first time I had free time to just sit and think. And so, the world of the Mass Effect. This world is known mainly for four things.

Firstly, the entire civilization of intelligent beings is built on Mass Effect technologies, which are based on very rare material obtained when solid material, such as the surface of a planet, is exposed to the energy released during a supernova explosion. This material is called Element Zero (NE) and when an electrical charge is applied to it, it begins to produce a field of dark energy that reduces or increases the mass of all objects inside it. It was on the basis of NE that SSDs (superluminal engines) were created, relays capable of creating, using the Mass Effect field, a semblance of spatial corridors in which enormous distances, which can be covered with conventional SSDs in years and even centuries, are covered in an instant. With the help of NE, artificial gravity is created on ships and space stations, kinetic shields in the equipment of all armed forces, in industry and at the domestic level. NE is a real miracle of the world, because its usefulness can hardly be overestimated. True, there was some kind of catch with this element, but I don't remember anymore. I'll find out when there will be less urgent matters and more free time.

Secondly, in this world there is a race of ancient intelligent machines, and I'm not talking about the geth that limit life in our galaxy. It was these machines - the Reapers, as they were called - that created huge relays with the help of which intelligent people travel in outer space. Or did the creators of the Reapers do it? Doesn't matter. The point is that once every fifty thousand years, the Reapers come from the depths of dark space and destroy all intelligent, sufficiently developed life in the galaxy, allowing new races to develop on the ruins of the old civilization. When the Reapers come, they "reap" the intelligent ones, processing them into biomass, with the help of which they create a hybrid biosynthetic material, on the basis of which they create a new Reaper, and then they leave for fifty thousand years to one day return again and repeat the harvest. They themselves call this process a cycle, and it is unknown how many cycles these fucking machines managed to carry out, but clearly a lot, and it is on the basis of the technologies of the Prothean race that perished in the last cycle that the technologies of the intelligent races of this cycle are based.

The Reapers, although they are the main problem of the galaxy, are also one of the wonders of the world: a hybrid of synthetic and organic! Their knowledge bases contain all the knowledge of past civilizations! Studying the structure of the Reaper is not just a unique opportunity for me, but a vital necessity! It is their synthetic-organic structure that can be the key for me to acquiring a real organic body and returning to a normal form of existence for me.

Thirdly, in this world there is a whole race of beautiful blue-skinned women who do not have a single man in their composition and are able to mate with any representative of organic life, a real miracle of the world of the Mass Effect, already the third in a row. Asari, as this long-lived race is called, can live for about a thousand years and do not lose their beauty as they age. However, I cannot appreciate the beauty of the existence of such a race, because I am a barren spirit, an AI, limited by an insensitive steel body, unable to sense taste, smell, heat or cold. A terrible torture for anyone who has known the joy of organic life.

Well, the fourth, the greatest and most important miracle of the world of the Mass Effect, which, I hope, has not yet appeared and I have time to prepare for its appearance. This is the butt of a human woman named Miranda Lawson. A true work of art that can be admired forever. The only thing I can do is admire, given my situation.

The flight time to a small planet with a fairly mild climate and a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere suitable for carbon-based life took twenty hours. During this time, I only had to be distracted twice to correct the course and help the quarian who had come to her senses, who had to be fed at least a little before she passed out again. Fortunately, her food supply on the ship was more than decent.

We made it just in time; the SSD engines on the batarian frigate had already accumulated the maximum permissible charge of static electricity and needed urgent discharge. And it wouldn't hurt to cool the radiators. Alas, during flights, spaceships accumulate static electricity, passing through the Mass Effect core to create fields of dark energy, and heat from the operation of the engines. And if they are not discharged and cooled from time to time, you risk getting fried from electricity passing through the hull of the ship or heat escaping from the radiators. In the planet's atmosphere, you can easily get rid of the accumulated charge and heat, but it's just not safe there yet. So, leaving the truck and the frigate dangling in the orbit of the planet, I myself deployed the kinetic barriers of my ship to full and descended directly to the complex of buildings that previously belonged to a small, private mining company.

I landed five geth assault platforms with an increased capacity of kinetic shields on the heads of six batars pouring out of the block barracks, which immediately opened fire on the four-eyed xenos, who did not even bother to put on armor. However, they thought that they would be safe at their base, so they did not equip themselves, taking only assault rifles.

And then everything turned out to be simple: check the interior of the complex, shoot two more four-eyed people who were already in full uniform and subdue the internal systems of the complex, which had very primitive protection. Only after this did I allow myself to relax and lower all the ships to the ground, where I carried out the necessary discharge and cooling procedures.

Well, that's all, I now have my base, taken from the batarian pirates, and in addition there is a sick quarian on a broken cargo ship. So, first I need to deal with the memory that I inherited from the geth and decide what to do next, although first of all it's worth resting, although my inorganic body doesn't need it, but it's too much for the first day in this world for my consciousness. Moreover, the situation with my synthetic existence is extremely dangerous, it was even easier for the original, he would most likely have been handed over to the Circle of Magicians in childhood if they had been discovered, and any intelligent organic life would finish me off at any opportunity, because the geth are the enemies of all organics . And I am not deceived by the easy reprisal against the pirates; if I had been caught by the normal armed forces of any race of the galaxy, or at least by richer and better equipped pirates or mercenaries, the result could have been completely different. Most likely, I would not have been able to load a virus into the systems of their ship, I would not have been able to hack them due to more advanced protection, at least remotely, and in space combat my ship is far from the best. Yes, and I won't dare to meddle with the geth, despite all their peacefulness, they may well try to "rewrite" me, considering me some kind of virus, and tens of thousands of geth may well succeed in their plans, and they are in the territory behind the Veil (nebula interfering conduct surveillance, which is the territory of the geth) much, much more. Trillions maybe. In general, we will think, think and decide what to do and how to live further.

***

To begin with, I decided to look into the available information in the geth databases, and this is a lot, a lot of information. What one geth knows, everyone knows is not an entirely correct statement, but it conveys the essence of the situation. The geth regularly return to their main base on Rannoch, reclaimed from the quarians, where the huge geth conglomerate exchanges all the information they have collected. To store all these data arrays, cyclopean memory systems are needed, which simply cannot be on a landing ship, and even what was available required a month of thoughtful study, and this with the enormous speed of AI thinking!

Well, but now I know the general history of the intelligent races of our galaxy, I thoroughly know the structure of the geth equipment and the basic technologies of the organics. For example, all weapons are built on the principle, as you might guess, of mass effect. The weapon itself contains a miniature Mass Effect core, and as ammunition a metal bar, from which a tiny projectile of a given shape is separated by EM fields, deprived of weight and accelerated by magnetic fields to hypersonic speeds, which compensate for the size of the ammunition. Moreover, the mass fields cover the projectile with a biotic shell, imparting explosive or deforming properties to increase the communicating energy of the target and increase the lethality of the warhead. Otherwise, the tiny bullets would simply fly right through the target with minimal damage.

Like ships, weapons become hot during use and the radiators take time to cool down. Not much, a few seconds, depending on the type of weapon, but in combat conditions this is a lot of time. However, the geth were able to overcome this drawback and use replaceable thermal charges in their weapons. Changing them takes no more than a second, which ensures a higher rate of fire and combat effectiveness. However, organics still use built-in radiators and this is my advantage.

Kinetic shields also utilize dark energy fields, using a miniature EM core to create shields around the user that dissipate the kinetic energy of small projectiles, such as hand weapon ammunition. Portable batteries are used to maintain kinetic shields, and the more of them and the more powerful they are, as well as the more powerful the EM core, the more damage the kinetic shield can withstand.

And so with everything, I can completely create a geth ship or mobile platform from scratch, I only need a production and assembly line and resources... which I don't have. I can create production and assembly lines, but for this I again need resources and tools that I don't have, and manual assembly will take a lot of time, years, to be more precise.

Well, I also found out the approximate time period of my appearance in this world. The Citadel Council is the executive committee of an interracial supranational alliance, and in fact a more or less diplomatic government of an alliance of races led by asari, salarians and turians and other races such as volus, elcor, hanar and batarians as satellites, has already been created. People have not yet gone into space and nothing is known about them at all. And now there is a lull in the galactic arena.

And while the quiet time passes, I must get a physical body, prepare for the arrival of the Reapers and study local technologies along the way. It's normal to study and ideally develop, otherwise now I only know the very basics, fortunately everything here is built according to the same principle.

Having gone into the analysis of the situation, I did not forget about the real world and, using available mobile platforms, conducted an audit of my new property.

The mining complex turned out to be more or less operational and required only a little maintenance and minor repairs of some tools, and the area was rich in heavy metals. Scanning the area also showed good deposits of light metals just thirty kilometers from the complex, but this is a gold mine for small businesses! But the previous owners were apparently hampered by the location of the complex near the Veil, behind which the geth are hiding, and the presence of a large number of criminals in the Terminus systems.

But with the ships it turned out to be even sadder. Or rather, my ship was in perfect condition, but the quarian's truck required the replacement of many systems and spare parts, and the ion engines were generally broken and required replacement of the main systems, including the fuel line. In short, a quarian was stuck there in space, and if it weren't for me, it's scary to imagine what would have happened to her.

The batarian frigate turned out to be completely rubbish, for some unknown reason it was working, so it was decided to disassemble it and use the spare parts to repair the truck and the mining systems of the complex. The remaining spare parts will also be used.

Well, I also looked after the girl, she was so weak that when she came to her senses I had to feed her by hand, and there was no talk of talking. Hmmm, she looked at me funny, a mixture of fear and denial of the obvious. Still, for the quarians, the geth are evil in the flesh, having taken their home from them, and now I look like a geth.

By the time the girl began to recover, I had already put her truck in order, dismantled the frigate, sorted out the electric generator of the mining complex, carried out maintenance on the equipment that required it, and even cleaned up, getting rid of the mess left behind by the batarians.

"You...get." the quarian, who had come to her senses, said in a weak voice. -Why did you help me?—.

Looking towards the girl with the visor of the platform that was constantly on duty here and assessing her condition, I decided to continue the conversation. — Incorrect request, I'm not a het. I am Ultron. And I didn't want your death.—.

"Ours?" the quarian made surprised, glowing eyes on her pretty face.

"I'm recording the formation of the fetus in the uterus," he answered, chirping like a geth at the end.

As they say, being determines consciousness? I don't really like being an insensitive piece of hardware.

-Fruit? Oh, Kila...that means I'm pregnant! "I...I have to go back to the fleet!" the girl tried to get up from the bed, throwing off the blanket and revealing a view of her young, slender and graceful naked body.

- Lie down, you only recently suffered a serious infection and are just getting better. You need to come to your senses completely." He jumped up to the girl to put her back, but only caused a frightened scream. - Lie down. When you feel better, you can leave this place and go to your relatives, but now rest.—.

"Thank you Ultron," the girl squeezed out and, pulling the blanket up to her nose, leaving only her eyes peeking out, she continued. —I'll try to sleep.—.

***

After launching the mining complex, I also started making myself a new platform, less like a geta. The instrumentron helped me with this - a multifunctional device that is used for a wide range of civil and military tasks, including repair, decryption and hacking of equipment. This useful thing consists of a miniature computer, an analyzer and a microassembler. When active, it looks like an orange holographic glove, although in fact it is illuminated this way for convenience. When the instrumentron exerts a physical effect, it actually illuminates the mass effect fields with which the instrumentron interacts with the world. A kind of personal computer and high-tech smartphone rolled into one for the inhabitants of this galaxy.

I even once flew on reconnaissance to the Terminus system and was able to steal from the increasingly popular mercenary group Eclipse, which, among other things, deals with smuggling, raider takeovers and security, an almost brand new truck with a small-scale processing line equipped inside it. Oh, and then these guys chased me, and the first time I barely escaped from them by setting mercenaries from another group, the Bloody Pack, on them. And while the Bloody Pack was firing at the ships of the Eclipse mercenaries, I, with a truck in tow, managed to escape through the Relay. Although Eclipse has been hunting me since then, at least they have announced a bounty on my head in the form of 250 thousand credits.

In general, everything was not so simple and at first I made an order to the Eclipse mercenaries, an order for almost a million credits, among other things, for the purchase of the latest specialized tools for the mining and processing complex. Naturally, I don't have that kind of money, and with a truck in tow I wouldn't be able to escape from the more maneuverable and well-armed Eclipse ships. No, they just escorted me to the place as security, and after installing and checking the equipment they would charge me money... well, that's what they thought. However, on the way they were ambushed by the Bloody Pack, with whom I ordered an attack on the Eclipse mercenaries for a couple of hundred thousand credits, which I also don't have. Moreover, I told the pack about the number of Eclipse ships so that the thugs from the Pack would take fewer ships with them and, as a result, approximately equal forces of the two groups would collide. While the Eclipse ships were working off their bread and, as they thought, were protecting me, I managed to jump through the relay, and then circled around the relays to cover my tracks and return to base. As a result, I have a brand new processing line for heavy and light metals and a good truck, and a certain Gordon Freeman is now listed as an enemy of two very powerful factions of the Terminus system. Moreover, no one knows the face of this smart-ass scammer, because at meetings with mercenaries I was dressed in a captured batarian spacesuit, and in order to fit into it I had to slightly redesign one of the geth platforms.

***

"Well, how?" he asked, showing off his new platform.

It looks, of course, unpretentious, but still very technologically advanced and reminiscent of that same Ultron in design: a smooth shape of the head, a slit mouth, sunken round cheeks, small antennae instead of ears, a predatory look and a more familiar human form with normal legs and five toes. hands. True, the platform is not yet fully completed, there is a lack of synthetic muscles in many parts, external armor, arms and legs sport open slits through which internal wiring is visible, and not to mention the completely open belly, showing an empty cavity inside the synthetic body. Yes, and it doesn't have repulsors with a reactor, and it will have to be charged, like all geth platforms with stationary charging, but still this is my first original work based on my own drawing.

-Not bad. It is not yet fully completed, but the technical characteristics are impressive. True, the weight is almost half a ton... Ultron, are you sure about the advisability of using heavy alloys? - the quarian with an already rounded tummy gave her characteristic while continuing to scan the new platform with her instrument.

"I think the increased strength, reliability and wear resistance are worth it, and the weight can be eliminated by installing an additional small EM core, which will potentially give me the opportunity to use an analogue of biotics," he answered, while simultaneously lifting the box with processed metals, checking the hydraulic system and resistance to deformation.

Although the platform already has a Mass Effect core, it is too small to be used as a reactor to ensure platform autonomy and acts as a kinetic shield generator.

It happens that during an accident at work or during transportation, a zero element irradiates living organisms, provoking various cancers. But if a pregnant woman is exposed to radiation, there is a possibility that during the formation of the fetus, NE will settle on the thickening of the nerve endings and will not cause health problems. Such an intelligent one is born a biotic - an intelligent one that, using electrical signals from its nervous system, can stimulate the zero element in its body and create mass effect fields at will. Biotics are able to use telekinesis, control gravity and electromagnetic fields, and much more. And since in production fields of mass effects are also used exclusively by technology, what prevents me from adapting this mechanism in a synthetic body and using it myself?

"This will at least double the energy consumption," the quarian reminded me of the disadvantages of using an additional mass effect core. —Were you able to come up with more capacious batteries or a more compact battery with increased power?—.

"I'm working on it." He put the box in place, feigning a sigh. -Are you sure you want to leave Tala?—.

Yes, from the moment we started communicating, the quarian quickly thawed out and even introduced herself normally - Tala nar Garadot. The girl was returning from a pilgrimage when we met, and before that she had crossed paths with her childhood friend, to whom she gave herself up, becoming pregnant with me and my twin. True, she had to "give birth" to me prematurely.

Tala's pilgrimage turned out to be productive, she was well versed in VI, AI and engineering, so she was able to get a job at an Azarian company on Illium, make some money, purchase and convert a truck and, most importantly, create a gift for the Migrant Fleet - a digital bomb specially designed against the geth , with which she fried the Geth patrol.

In general, Pilgrimage is a tradition of quarians who live on ships of a huge space fleet due to the lack of a suitable planet for colonization. When they become adults and receive their adult spacesuit, the quarians set off on a free voyage. Traveling across the galaxy, they learn to live independently and look for something valuable to donate to the fleet, be it technology, ships or food.

After our acquaintance, Tala came to the conclusion that the bomb, instead of frying the brains of the geth, reformatted them and united them into a single AI, so she abandoned it as a weapon. But as we became closer, Tala decided to give up the bomb and she even began to teach me how to create VI (virtual intelligence) - an advanced form of software user interface, which helped a lot, and I shared with her the technology of geth batteries to power kinetic shields. Which will strengthen the quarian kinetic shields and potentially improve their energy-hungry generator technology. In general, a very useful thing.

-Sorry Ultron, but I really have to go. "I finished my pilgrimage a long time ago, and I need to please the child's father," the girl gently laid her hands on her tummy.

"Okay, I'll show you off," he nodded to the girl and laid the unfinished platform on the workplace.

Although I trusted the quarian, I treated my metal skin with the greatest caution, so I limited her tools for sending messages and erased the history of the logbooks on all ships. And one of my platforms escorted her to the living compartment of her ship, while I controlled the flight of the truck remotely. I have the approximate coordinates of the fleet, so I can take Tala to the right place without revealing my location.

And so it happened, during the time that we got to the secondary relay, jumped as close as possible to another secondary relay, then the primary and finally got to a healthy colossus on the other side of the galaxy, five days passed. Moreover, most of this time was taken up by flights from relay to relay within the same star system.

In general, repeaters are very interesting things, sort of substitutes for portals that create a network of stellar transitions between each other. Repeaters look like a sphere formed by two concentric rings rotating around a common axis, in the middle of which there is a massive Mass Effect core. Each ring is about five kilometers in diameter, and from one side of this constantly rotating core emerge two parallel beams, each fifteen kilometers long. Repeaters can create a "corridor" of dark energy fields in which the body has no mass and in which the ship can cover a distance that would take years to cover on a conventional SSD.

There are two types of repeaters: Primary and Secondary. One primary relay is connected to another primary relay, and can only move to it. But the distance when moving with the help of primary relays can be thousands of light years and you can instantly "jump" from one arm of the galaxy to another. Secondary relays allow you to "jump" only hundreds of light years to another relay, but one secondary relay is connected to several of the same ones.

"That's it, it's time to say goodbye." I turned my back to the transport shuttle, on which I must return to my ship.

"We'll see each other again Ultron?" Tala smiled sadly.

Still, she no longer sees a geth in me and her hatred of geths does not extend to me. And even though I am also an AI, she saw only good things from me.

"I don't know Tal, I'm not sure, after all, I'm an AI, and you yourself know how organics treat us, especially..." the phrase remained unsaid, but its essence is clear anyway. "But if you need me, I'll be in touch." So we don't say goodbye forever.—.

After standing a little longer, the quarian impulsively hugged my platform and when I boarded the shuttle, she said goodbye for the last time. —Kila Se'Lai.—.

Having reached the mother ship on the shuttle, he noted with his sensors that Tala's truck flew to a massive technological relic and disappeared in a flash of dark energy. That's all, Tala went through the relay and jumped to the quarians, and all I had to do was go back. I'm alone again, but at least I can fully concentrate on my tasks.