Nier Effect Current Work

“We’ll be arriving shortly Commander.”
She nodded at the pilot’s statement and turned away from the flight command. Kashell was quite the pilot and she had no reason not to trust the Asari’s estimate on how long it would take them to make this last jaunt through the Charon relay to the Sol system.
Besides, A2 had other matters to focus on.
Like the passenger she was shuttling to Earth.
As soon as the full extent of the troubles became known to her she changed her original plans to drop by and discuss the matter with them. It had been something like instinct that drove her, a bizarre and sudden urgent push from the depths of her code that she couldn’t quite parse the source out of. Originally she’d only intended a short discussion, maybe an hour or so while she resupplied with the best they could spare from the ‘so-called’ mining operation ran by Cerberus Industries out at the edges of Android claimed space.
But instead things had taken a decidedly different turn, and now she found herself seated across from him.
What had once been the last machine lifeform with sentience on Earth. A conclusion she’d never truly believed, but now somewhat wished had been true.
Pascal had, despite his origins, found a measure of peace during and after the war. And while the number of androids which had had close dealings with him had never been large, they could all vouch for strange and unexpected integrity the felt from him. She hadn’t born witness to it herself, but apparently there’d been a wave of relief among the rank and file when YoRHa had become aware of the increasing numbers of non-violent machine lifeforms. Hardly surprising when one realized that because of their young ages and immediate insertion into combat, most of YoRHa didn’t really have a lingering grudge for the machines and thanks to the use of specialized backups they were less likely to develop them.
The fact that the seasoned vets in Anemone’s camp had been just as willing to acknowledge a truce at the time only went to show how weary Android forces in general had become over the years. Nobody really wanted to keep fighting, to keep killing, as they had been. And those that did…
Well, she could speak from experience in saying that it had really just been suicide with extra steps involved.
Regardless, all of that had been for nought as the Terminals, the ‘Command Structure’ of the Machine Lifeforms had set about systematically exterminating most any and every independent faction of their own race during the twilight hours of the war. Given their capabilities, no longer hidden or obfuscated for the sake of keeping Android morale so as to have another force to fight, they had proven quite adept at that task. Whatever group of survivors had managed to hide out and make it through to the point they tired of the war and left Earth of their own volition, A2 could easily foresee how that had led them to remain hiding far longer than they ever had in prior conflicts.
Not that that explained why they had revealed themselves now, or in the fashion they had chosen to do so.
Pascal hadn’t been able to answer that question with much more accuracy either.
“They have to have some sort of plan. They always did…” It gnawed at her, a bitter and unpleasant sensation that had her hands tightening on the railing beside her. If she wasn’t careful she’d bend the steel soon.
She if they needed to, that they’d actually be able to stop it this time.
***
“Captain A2 has arrived.”
White nodded to the Turian that entered then, holding a network locked tablet in her hands. Part of the procedure for ‘peer adversary’ in electronic warfare required all sensitive and unsecured systems to either be shutdown or run under harsh restrictions. Sadly this included very nearly the entire Turian fleet… and more of her own than she’d like to admit.
Especially given how they had no way of knowing how long the Machines might have been planning this and how far they could have infiltrated. It would take weeks to purge, reinstall, and resecure every local server. As it was only the Recon Fleet under Admiral Carmine’s authority was fully functional with little to no technical limitations at the moment. Once recalled they had reset their security parameters and ran on locked and limited communications system separate from both of the other main fleets, which had either been in system too often and for too long to be trusted or were in the process of being refit for service at this very moment.
She wished they’d gotten further along with the Martian shipyards, at least then they’d have a light delay (once they shut down the Eezo Comms anyhow) to hopefully keep the Machines out of their systems, but as it stood most of her own ships were now running on ‘un-aided’ targeting and using direct android manpower to ferry orders from one point to another.
Short bursts of communications could still be used, and were to some extent required, but the codes required to authorize those same transitions were having to be carried to each and every soldier or deck commander personally.
Frankly, if they’d had the supplies of paper and pens, they’d have written them down before they even relied on the tablets.
But there just wasn’t time to worry about those sorts of things right now.
Thankfully the Turians had proven to be every bit as well trained as they boasted and they had taken to this new security measures quickly. To some extent so fast she was a little envious of their performance.
“We’ve gotten too used to peacetime operations,” White mused internally. Though she supposed that was something of an odd statement. They’d been at war, or something like it, for decades now against the Krogan. But it was a matter of comparisons. For all the Krogan’s considerable, and proven multiple times over, capacity to lay siege to entire worlds and render them desolate, lifeless, or literally blasted to pieces (how they’d managed that little light show the Special Tactics and Reconnaissance teams still hadn’t been able to properly explain), they were not the same kind of threat as the Machine Lifeforms. A constant, neverending fear of sudden and unexpected death that could come from anywhere at any time. Wars like that simply didn’t happen between space faring civilizations, the ebb and flow of the theatre was such that, given the sheer capability of firepower both sides had and the ability to move it so quickly thanks to the relay system, no prolonged fight could last unless both sides pointedly forgot to support their own soldiers on the ground.
The Machine Wars had been an anomaly in the history of galactic warfare, only possible because a species possessing only sublight travel and some… bizarre psychology tried to claim a world populated by a race as hardy as her own. For whatever reason the aliens hadn’t cared how long their machines would take to exterminate the androids…
It had been going into its third millennium of slow territory losses when the machines suddenly changed tactics...
And for reasons even more inexplicable, those same machines had then decided quite on their own to kill their masters and then just pretend to be following their orders.
The same Turian from before suddenly re-entered, looking somewhat flustered, mouth agape as she tried to form the words she needed to say.
“Yes Lieutenant?” Maxina said from where she was standing by the Turian Fleet Admiral.
“Forgive me, but my earlier report was… incomplete. A2 has arrived,” she said, pausing for a moment, still searching for the words. “And she brought a guest.”
***
There was obviously some confusion.
The Turians in particular had never met a Machine Lifeform, and finding out that there was a living one in Android 'custody’ (or something like it) must have come as quite the surprise. Thankfully Pascal had always been something of a natural diplomat and easily dissuaded their initial fears. Her own statements about how she had had some brief communications with him and his ‘pacifist faction’ before the end of the war, backed up by A2’s own and the hesitant yet firm acknowledgement from Hake that numerous Machine Lifeform forces had started to break off and form their own independent, and not necessarily hostile forces after the the 13th Machine War. In the end they seemed rather more at ease than she would have expected given the obvious… unnatural and mechanical composition of their guest.
But then she had to remind herself that it was really only Androids that went around feeling like they had suddenly found ‘people’ out in space, if not the ones that had made them, at the very least cultures and beings organic and living.
For the Turians this was another meeting with an alien, and no more or less strange than the Hanar or the Volus.
Probably less so than the Hanar in truth.
“I really must apologize. While I can decipher some of these encrypted channels, they are as you surmised. Internal communications between these new nations and not related to the primary network’s new consciousness,” Pascal had a limited range of ‘expressions’, but by their voice alone she could tell he truly was sorry for his inability to help. “In the end I can’t think of any Machine that was ever allowed to directly speak to them… they controlled us, but they did not take orders or advice from any but themselves.”
“But they were still formed by you yes? Surely there’s some sort of… contribution?”
“I suspect it might be more like Rachni,” A2 said. “Maybe even more so. I never got the feeling that the Twins… thought like us. Machines or Androids. They were off in their own little world, looking at us like we were all trapped in a bottle and they could do whatever they wanted.”
A number of grim expressions were shared at that. It was one thing to attempt diplomacy, or at the very least, to anticipate the actions of beings that thought like them. But if even those that had been the closest to the Networks had an opinion on their behavior being so alien in comparison felt that way…
How could they possibly predict what they might do?
It was Ostium that turned the conversation back to its central focus. “In the end though, they always wanted to fight, to battle… to challenge themselves through the only thing they could think themselves made for. Warfare.”
She turned towards him, surprised by the intensity in his eyes, his artificial hand clenched tightly as he turned and looked at the map of the Earth before them.
“Such a strange and limited perspective,” he said, softer now. “How did they ever delude themselves into thinking that they had become more than you by emulating only the most surface level understanding of organic life?”
“I think you overestimate our own society at that time Admiral.” Hake shook his head sadly, continuing, “We were hardly any better back then. I can’t think of much of anything from those years that didn’t involve the war in one sense or another?
“Do I? Do I really?” Ostium turned towards Hake as he spoke. “You might be the oldest here, but you are far from one of the first Androids. And I’ve read your history, as much of it as you have. You weren’t made for fighting, not initially. Humans needed doctors and nurses more than they needed more boots on the ground… and even then, when the last of them died, it took less than a century before you’d already broken apart into new political factions.”
“The Independentist movement didn’t exactly get to do much back then.”
“Because of the Machines though,” Ostium said, before gesturing towards Pascal. “I don’t mean offense towards our current guest.”
“None taken in truth. Holding onto the vendettas against the Androids at this point, ones I don’t remember and wasn’t even around for, would be the height of foolishness.”
“Yes it would,” Ostium said nodding. “Perhaps I misspoke. The alien invaders, unnamed and unknown though they are, remain ultimately responsible. Even if their creations carried on long after their deaths, it was this event that stagnated and reversed the growth of your civilization. Were it not for that the very galaxy would be quite different I am certain…”
“You have to be kidding Ostium. I mean, we’d be in a better position, but the galaxy?”
White shared Carmine’s disbelief, though she’d have phrased it more diplomatically. Then again the youngest admiral had been on edge since Pascal showed up, sparing the odd glare towards herself.
Something had her on edge, and White had some idea what it might be…
This went unnoticed by the Turian though, who continued to speak as he paced around the central display. “Undoubtedly. You have one of, if not the, largest Prothean cache on record. Once discovered you would have found yourself in a galaxy with no peers at all now known that could compete with you. My species was still working out how to make bronze weapons and even the Asari were still fighting as feudalistic tribes. Perhaps the Rachni might have presented a problem…”
He waved his hands as he dismissed that line of thought (too quickly in White’s mind, as the recent behavior of their ‘guests’ was making her reevaluate how technically adept they really were).
“But you’ve apparently managed to pacify them and I have no doubt that Androids have the mettle to deal with such a conflict without going to look for easy solutions like employing the Krogan to do the fighting for you. In any event, you’d have arrived at an empty Citadel… and taken a place as the premiere spacefaring civilization by which all others would judge themselves.”
“Please, Ostium, this is not the time nor the place for such flattery.” Despite himself, Hake had a small grin now as he spoke. “You almost sound envious of this ‘supposed future’ you’ve invented.”
“I am.”
Hake’s grin fell away, as a shock shared by the other androids in the room came over him,
“I understand you, your species more so than I do many others. And perhaps my biases color this opinion, but I have little doubt that if I must pick some long-lived race of near immortals to be governing the stars I’d prefer those who I feel respect the importance and duty in service to their own.”
That had her stunned, even more so than his earlier admission. White thought to herself, “But we-we were made to serve… even if it’s only ourselves now, this is, does he really feel that way?”
Did all of them?
The expression on Maxina’s face, her nodding acknowledgement, the way so many Turians had acquiesced to her leadership at other times, even how other species seemed to act towards them. She and all other Androids were simply doing the best they could with the way things were…
Was that really so admirable to them all?
“White, may I speak to you in private?”
She turned to see Carmine staring at her with even greater intensity than before. Whatever had been bothering her had reached a tipping point. She looked at Hake and while he appeared troubled he didn’t object. She stepped outside, leaving the others to respond to Ostium’s sudden ‘speech’ and turned towards Carmine.
Who looked now like she was striving to control herself, to keep from striking out at White then and there in the halls. Her face twisted into an uglry grimace, disgust evident as she looked at her.
“How could you?”
“I… what?”
“Don’t lie to me, not about this… after all the other lies,” Carmine said, shaking her head, “even after your pardon. You go right back to acting like Command. Hiding things from us for our own good…”
“She… she means-”
“Pascal.”
“Oh yes, the Machine,” Carmine said, spitting the word out. “Or did you really think I’d believe that one of your subordinates, one of the best at that, just managed to sneak him off world without your notice. Hell, did A2 even go rogue or was that just another lie for some other cover story we were all kept in the dark about?”
“Carmine I-”
“No more. No more!” She yelled, taking a deep breath and closing her eyes, opening them only once she could express some sort of calm once more. White then realizing as she did so that she had stepped back, now placed between the wall of the corridor and a distraught ex-YoRHa.“I don’t care how much these aliens are enamored with you White, you are done after this.”
“What do you intend to do?”
“Take this to the Council, the general assemblies of every integrated nation that’s reformed. I don’t think we can get away with exile or any real punishment… not with your ‘clout’ out here,” she said, turning down the hall to glance at a passing Turian. “But there’s no way you’ll be allowed to remain in a command function in YoRHa or anywhere else in the Alliance after this.”
Carmine turned quickly, not waiting for a response from White. Who could only stay upright as she did thanks to the support of the ship itself. Leaning there, raising up her left hand and rubbing at her eyes.
She was right of course.
She might have made it through prior incidents with her career in one piece, but this was entirely too obvious. A2 had nothing to fear and nothing to lose, more tied up in working as a ‘trainer’ for the Council’s own private forces and an advisor to Special Tactics and Reconnaissance. Part of her cover and her own operations which White had been secretly supporting for Jackass through all these years.
Which meant even if she wanted to, she couldn’t afford to make a major defense of herself. If she did the investigation might uncover things and-
And-
Her career would be over, no matter how this current crisis ended.