[Book Four] Chapter 3: Rescue Safeguard

[Book Four] Chapter 3: Rescue SafeguardChapter 3: Rescue Safeguard

The crew of the Normandy was more or less the same than during the war. At least that’s what Rick thought as he never really paid much attention to the nameless people he was traveling with. Out of the ground teams during his three service on the ship, Miranda was there for obvious reason, along with Jennifer but also Garrus and Wrex as representatives of their species. The krogan, when he heard of the mission, immediately volunteered. Rick was pretty sure it was because he wanted some time off from the bedroom activities he was subjected to by the females.

Kaidan, Ashley and Steve were there too as they were members of the crew during the war. Tevos was present with her authority as both councilor and representative of the Asari, along with Anderson, to everyone’s surprise. Hackett believed that Jane alone wouldn’t be enough, considering that for many people the last thing they knew of her was that she blew up the Alpha relay killing three hundred thousand Batatians. Anderson was still the human councilor at the time, a military man and well respected, so Steven thought that it would be better. There were new faces of course like a salarian, an elcor and a volus representative.

When Rick entered the ship from the sas he immediately went to see Joker instead of going down the bridge.



“Hey, how is it going?”

“Rick! You’re awake! Man, it’s good to see you, finally someone else on board with a good sense of humor besides EDI.”

“I honestly don’t know how you do it. Being in a stern organization like the navy without being able to joke around with people.”

“It pays well and I can fly my baby.”

“Not retiring any time soon then?”

“Hell no! Are you crazy?!”

“Well, yes... But that’s not the point. I guess, I’ll hire your sister then, she’s young but better.”

“Hilary? You...”

“No one told you? The mission is to wake everyone in a stasis pod. I hope you got your T-shirt ‘ Fighting Reapers? Been there, done that and got this lousy T-shirt.’ ready for her. She’s at the first stop and so is your father.”

“... Thank you.” Joker said, trying to control the emotions he was feeling and got a hand of support on his shoulder.

“Hey, what’s the point of having friends in high places if from time to time you can’t get something out of it?” joked Rick, making Joker snort.

“I guess death didn’t change you too much, unlike the Commander. How was it by the way?”

“Boooooring but did you know that Death was a redhead? I tormented her so badly she just sent me back; saying I was another redhead’s problem.”

“I won't even be surprised if that turned out to be true.” the pilot laughed.



They joked a bit more and Rick gave a kiss to EDI on the cheek before going down the bridge. The presence of a familiar Com specialist made him make a small detour from his quarters.



“If this isn’t little Minnie.”

“Rick.”he greeted tightly.

“How are you doing?”

“Perfect.”

“My... What cold answers.”

“I’ve been waiting for a year for that win at chess that you owe me!”

“Win at chess? What are you talking about?”

“The one you promised me when the Commander’s clone was stealing the Normandy!”

“I don’t remember that... Must be one of the memories I lost after coming back to life.”

“Oh!... Hmm... I...” the poor woman didn’t know what to say, on one hand she was incensed because she wanted to win, on the other it was really callous and inappropriate to insist on it.

“I do remember promising to go easy on you however. Whether you get a win out of it or not is ultimately up to you though. Don’t miss the opportunity because it’s the only one you will get.” he replied, pulling her out of her misery.

“Why! You! I’m going to kick your ass!”

“Promises, promises ~~”

Laughing and leaving behind a mad Traynor he interred his quarters or former quarters. So far, he didn’t know if the space belonged to him anymore or if Dorothea/ EDI appropriated it or if it was just scrapped. It was with surprise that he found Jane, Anderson and Tevos inside with the former giving some explanation.



“So most of it has been done here?” the asari asked.

“With the exception of testing, yes.” replied the redhead.

“Impressive in such little space.” commented Anderson.

“Geniuses don’t really need much space to come up with things.” Rick said as he got close to the group. “In fact the more restrictions they have the more their creativity works overtime.”

“You’re here, good. I was showing around the Normandy to councilor Tevos and Admiral Anderson. What made it so effective during the war, in comparison to other ships.”

“To see a bit of where history was made.” added Tevos.

“I understand why you, Gorgeous but Anderson? Didn’t you get on board before?”

“Not since before the invasion, too much work to do.”

“I’m really surprised that you would put a lab on the CIC. I’m not much of a military woman but isn’t such a thing in lower decks?”

“Yes. Originally I put a small lab/ workshop on the engineering deck when we were fighting the collector but the alliance designers were shit, so when the war started I had to improvise and use as much wasted space as I could. Everything that you see here, from the table, to the machines, or don’t see like the power cords and everything else under the plaques in the walls, floor and ceiling was made by me. Concerning the lab in general, everything organic related should be on its own deck for security, everything tech wise can be put wherever. The advantage of putting that lab on the CIC was... I had to walk less to get in contact with Admiral Hackett. It was faster for Gingerbread to be in contact with me too and see what I was working on.”



“I arrived at the CIC, checked what was going on, the tasks of the day and went straight to the lab to see the advancement of important projects then made a report to the Admiral. All in one go. Lot of time gained from not walking around everywhere.” Jane explained.

“Things would have been better without that gigantic com center though considering the Normandy was supposed to be a mobile central command I understand why it was created.”

“What’s that door leading to?”

“My bedroom, with a personal bathroom and everything.” walking towards the door and opening it. Having a look, not much had changed since the last time he had been there.

“Bathroom?”

“Just like for the lab; I connected some pipes to the lower deck’s. The less time I spent outside those quarters the more work I could do.”

“Not really military standard but I understand why.” Anderson nodded having a look with Tevos of the bedroom.

“Military standard is overrated. It completely fails the mental needs of the crew among other things.”

“How so?” Asked the Asari.

“Military is all work and no games, which is understandable, however being locked up for days on a small ship with no real distraction is taking a toll on the mind. That’s why the Normandy had been redesigned to give some relaxing activities which at the same time do not jeopardize anything.”

“Such as?”

“You’re talking about the gym area and the shooting range on the cargo deck?” Anderson inquired but was more stating than anything.

“Yes. Physical activity is a sure way for the crew to evacuate stress in a healthy manner and at the same time to keep in shape for service. I simply followed what the turians do. A gym is really useful when you have a Krogan on board, especially if he’s young. They can be pretty restless.”

“So far, I have noted a 30.1% increase in the mood and morale and a 22.8% increase in their productivity on average for members that would use the gym or the shooting range.” EDI said through the com.

“That’s a lot.” commented Tevos.

“I’ll share that information with Hackett. EDI send me the data.”

“Right away, Admiral.”

“Also, send the interior design you made for every type of ship, while you’re at it, please. The Normandy is not the run out of the mill frigate after all.”

“Noted.”

“Perfect for spectre works though.” Jane said.

“And that’s actually why you’re having a tour, isn’t it, Gorgeous?”

“Yes.”

“Really?!” exclaimed, Jane and Anderson.

“Commander, spectre usually works alone with discretion but sometimes they need help for more serious missions. Ever since you became one, you always worked with a crew of people from multiple backgrounds with multiple and different sets of skills. So far your success is unprecedented, chasing and stopping Saren Arterius with his army of heretics and krogans clones, the collectors, the diverse missions you did during the war. I have the idea to change how the spectres works a bit. Providing them at the minimum with a small ship for a crew of half a dozen people at the very least instead of letting them get funds on their own. Naturally, the members' selection would be under the spectre’s discretion though the council would still have the right to veto anyone. It wouldn’t be forced on every spectre of course but a choice they have.”

“Doesn’t that defeat the autonomy of the spectres?” asked Jane.

“A bit, yes, but your results speak for themselves. Spectres hold in their hands a lot of power and in recent years some have quite abused it. Saren and Vazir most notably. I’m of the mind that if the council had supported them financially a bit and not left them on their own, fewer would betray the council to get what they need to do their job. I believe that the Alliance supporting you with a ship and a crew helped you in a non-negligeable way in your work.”

“Well... I can’t deny that the Normandy itself has been of tremendous help.”

“I’ll be presenting this motion to the other councilors and the head of each government before the end of the year. If you have anything to give to help make those changes, I won’t say no.”

“I can make a detailed report of my own experience, would that be enough?”

“Certainly.”



Afterward Jane led Tevos and Anderson to the other decks. Rick went with them and gave his own opinion on what was good and what wasn’t on the ship, depending on what its purpose was. A military version of the Normandy wouldn’t have the same purpose as a Normandy for spectre work. It was more for Anderson that Tevos as the ship’s model was still something heavily classified to Humanity and the hierarchy, though the ideas for a new type of ship were not lost. After discussing the need to upgrade the med-bay and visiting the engineering deck, which technically was the deck with the most wasted space, the small group reached the Cargo Deck.



“Oh! A lot has changed.” commented Anderson in wonder. He liked what he was seeing.

“We pulled back the consoles from half the distance it was before to gain space. We put the shuttles closer to the Cargo door to be faster when exiting and getting in.” explained Rick.

“As you can see, we have the Gym area over there. It’s small but for the crew it was enough.” Jane indicated as she pointed to two treadmills, a stationary bicycle and a rack of weights.

“We put the lockers for the weapons on the left and the armor on the right, that way if the crew need to act fast, they can gear up as soon as they exit the elevator. Though I would put a small number of lockers for both on each deck. When the Collectors boarded the ship, the crew was armed because the armory was on the CIC. With this configuration we would have been doomed.”

“Hmm. I see what you mean. That presents a problem with the elevator, it’s too small for everyone.” Anderson commented.

“And the only direct access. That is something that the SSV did almost right, actually.”

“What did it do?” Tevos asked.

“To go from the CIC to the Crew Deck you just had to get down some stairs and that’s where the elevator was. I believed that a direct access to each deck with stairs or at the very least firefighters’ pole would not restrain the crew’s actions in case of an emergency. We had proof of how inconvenient relying on the elevator solely was during the war.”

“Yes, I read that report.” Anderson said with a very bad poker face while Jane was unamused but clearly blushing.

“What happened?” Asked Tevos, noticing their faces.

“We had...” Jane began, not wanting to say what happened but was saved by her brother.

“A power problem due to an overload of EDI’s servers. EDI had to shut down everything but the vitals essential. Everyone was stuck on their deck floating around without being able to communicate or fix what was happening. Thankfully it didn’t last long but we learned our lesson.”

“I see.”



Anderson smirked at Rick and Jane sighed in relief. Her brother had technically not lied one bit but got away by focusing on the what rather than the why and how of the situation, implicitly saying that there had been a cyber attack on EDI’s server. She loved how he could make you think whatever he wanted with the truth, making it your own fault if you got it wrong.



The tour ended quickly and Andereson and Tevos were left to their own devices, mainly talking with the other representatives. The first of the bunkers was now a couple days away in the Artemis Tau cluster and everyone got themselves more or less comfortable. Tevos got Liara’s room, Anderson, Rick’s and the rest of the representatives got the room that Javik and Diana occupied. Rick for his part slept in the captain’s cabin on his sister’s order, though he succeeded in sharing a couch with Ashley.



“The blue pod is for the one in charge, the gray ones for her direct subordinates.” he said and indicated to everyone to open them. It took five minutes for the pods to bring the occupants out of stasis and a few more for them to get out of their induced sleep. Tevos got close to the captain as she was a familiar asari face, for her people, being a councilor for nearly a century.



“Captain P’Litana, are you alright?”

“Councilor?” asked the groggy asari.

“Yes, this is me.”

“Why are you here? Weren’t we supposed to...”

“We won.”

“Excuse me, ma’am?”

“We won the war, captain.”

“That’s true?” said a human officer that Kaidan was helping up.

“Yes. We’ll tell you everything in a moment, just get situated first.” Anderson said.



Meanwhile Rick was looking at the master command, searching for any problem that could have happened, like a malfunction or possibly sabotage, but everything was fine. All inhabitants were alive and in good health to his relief. Once the leading members of the expedition got the short version of the war, the group wondered how to proceed. After all they had half a million people to wake up.



“First we should probably wake up all military or security personnel, to help with guiding the civilians and reassure them.” proposed Anderson.

“Should they be armed? Most of those people had been kidnapped after all, they may not be happy.” asked Jane.

“Which won’t help with their disorientation.” added Kaidan.

“Wald, any idea?” Tevos asked.

“Not really, why?” the man replied dumbfounding everyone.

“You’re the one that made all of that! That’s your project!”

“Well, yeah but I wasn’t supposed to be alive when people woke up, so I left that in the hands of the competent people in charge.”

“Are you serious?” the councilor exclaimed in a bit of an outrage.

“I made sure four millions people were alive, perpetuating our civilizations and I did it mostly alone. I couldn’t think of everything at the time, so a bit of understanding would be appreciated.”

“I...”

“It’s fine.” he cut her off and went back on topic. “Anderson’s idea is good, though I wouldn’t armed security with lethal weapons but I think that was a given for everyone. Make the personnel work in groups while the species representative led by Gorgeous and Anderson, broadcast a visual all over the bunker. Familiar faces to tell them to gather at a certain place to explain their situations may help in keeping everyone in line. Let’s be honest, it’s less of a bunker and more of a city, so we should wake people up, sector by sector, to not be overwhelmed.”

“That could take days.” Miranda commented.

“Yes but it’s better than everyone at the same time, there aren't enough people in the know to deal with that big of a number.”

“Ash is right, it would be easier for newly awakened people if already awake people were there to answer their questions. Sometimes authority is not very well looked upon and the information coming from someone in the same situation as you are is more easily accepted.” Rick said.

“Then let’s go with that.”



With Anderson’s words, everyone began to act. Captain P’Litana stayed in the command room while her subordinates and everyone that wasn’t a specific representative left via the elevator. The number of people part of the security was roughly two thousand and fortunately, were all in the same area. Thankfully, they didn’t have to open the pods one at a time, Rick had made it so that it was possible to open them in a group.

The first hour was spent waking up a group of fifty people every ten minutes bringing the total to three hundred people at the end. The simple ‘ we won the war, so we’re getting you home’ worked for an explanation with a promise to learn more when everyone was awake. With three hundred people awake, dealing with the rest went faster as the groups set to awake went from fifty people to two hundred and before the end of the second hour the totality of the security force was ready.

Getting the detailed explanation they were promised from Tevos and Anderson, everyone went to gear up and prepare to do their jobs. Some were posted in the stasis room, others along the way to direct people to big open central areas and others to indicate where was what (like the toilets, bathroom, cafeteria, gym etc...) and to share a map of the place on everyone’s omni-tool. Once everyone was ready they began to wake five thousand people at a time. As expected many were disoriented, some were in panic and wanted answers immediately, some others were angry and dealt accordingly if they turned to violence.



“That went better than expected.” Anderson commented.

“Considering the situation, yes.” Tevos said and she received a sign from captain P’Litana.

“Everything is in order, councilor. You can begin your speech.”

“Good morning everyone, I am councilor Tevos of the council and with me are Admiral Anderson of the alliance, Molak Kurosa of the Salarian, Garrus Vakarian of the Turian Hierarchy, Urdnot Wrex of the Krogan, Ambassador Balin of the Elcor and Ambassador Fin Horlatt of the Volus. We understand that you have a lot of questions and we are here to answer them all.”

“Let’s start with why you are here. You were all chosen to perpetuate our species and civilizations. After a careful selection process each one of you was chosen under two criterias. One, you’re very good at what you do. Two, you do not mind and even search for interspecies collaboration.”

“You were all chosen because we believed you to be the best people for the future.” Tevos talked again. “I’m sure that one of the questions you’re asking yourself is ‘Why kidnapped me, if that's true?’ The answer is quite simple; we couldn’t afford to let the public know. We couldn’t afford any kind of leak of this project. We couldn’t afford refusal and rejection.”

“We understand that in your eyes it doesn’t make anything clearer, quite the contrary, so here's why. In May 2186, Commander Jane Shepard, first human spectre destroyed the batarian’s Alpha Relay under pretext of stopping an invasion of a race of very old machines called Reapers whose only goal was to extinguish any organic life in the galaxy that could space travel.”

“It seems like the words of an insane person and many people thought that was the case, including many people in everyone’s respective government. However, Commander Shepard was telling the truth. Six months later, on November Seventh 2186, a race of powerful machines entered the galaxy and began to exterminate everyone.”

At that moment footage of Reapers landing on different worlds began to be played along the representatives display, courtesy of Rick. Tevos let a minute or two for the people to watch what was happening before speaking up again.



“This is not a movie. This is not a montage. This is History. Fortunately some people were aware of the Reapers' existence and had been delaying their invasion for years. Most notably, Commander Shepard and her crew, starting with the attack on the Citadel by the traitor Saren Arterius which was not as the council said under pressure from their respective governments, an attack from the geths.”

“The many governments, despite much proof, denied the existence of the Reapers. They found it inconceivable that a race could come and go every fifty thousand years in the galaxy to wipe everyone's out. They paid for it dearly when the galaxy was invaded, just like the protheans did and many civilizations before, going as far back as hundred millions of years.”

“Fortunately, many people knew the truth and worked in secret to make sure that should we lose the war against the reapers our civilizations would not be extinguished and that the next time they would come we would be ready to face them. This is why you were chosen in secret, the governments would have shut everything down and had we lost the war, we would really have been doomed and the cycle of death would have continued for who knows how many more millions of years.”

“Furthermore the Reapers had the technology to brainwash people, make them puppets without anyone noticing. We couldn’t risk having the Reapers know what we were planning for our survival.” he announced and Rick showed footage of indoctrinated people helping the reapers forces.

“We’re deeply sorry to have done things the way we did towards you but it was the only way to ensure your safety.”

“In the end we’ve won the war but not without heavy losses.”

“And that’s because we won that we are waking you up from your stasis today and not in two hundred years as planned. In a few moments, you will have access to the extranet to verify that what we just told you is the truth and real. If you have any questions relating to the war, please post it on this forum whose address is currently displayed on screen.”

“Do know that you are the first five thousand people to be woken up out of half a million. We hope that when other groups are pulled out of their stasis you will be willing to offer your help to accommodate them..”

“We are currently in a secret bunker, your stay here will not be long, a couple weeks at most as we don’t have enough ships to evacuate everyone back in one time. In the meantime you are provided with everything you need. Private quarters, food, showers, recreational areas and much more. If you need anything, do not hesitate to ask security. If you wish to help the next group please, give your name to any member of the staff.”

“We thank you for your understanding and your cooperation.”

On that Rick cut the video feed from the camera in the command room but left the address for posting questions on display.



“I got everything, good job.” he said to Tevos and Anderson.

“That will help, I don’t see myself doing that speech every hour.”

“Me neither.” admitted the Admiral.

“Are there any reactions from them already?” The captain asked Rick.

“Half a hundred questions are in, mainly on the same subject. From the surveillance cameras, they were rather calm but worried, especially when the topic about the reapers was broached. Most of them are on the extranet searching for answers.”

“Alright, let’s wait a bit before waking a second group so we can observe the reaction of this one.”Anderson proposed.

“What about my people?” Wrex asked.

“They’re all in the same group which, if we’re following the current pattern, would be group number... Eleven. If we wake a group every hour, they’ll be up around tomorrow just in time for lunch.” Rick said before following up with words to Miranda. “Orianna and her family are group 27.”

“Thank you.” replied the ravenette.



With a plan of action and schedule, everything was set and the Normandy crew took some time to relax before waking the next group.