The Short Road Home

Amber Penglass

Chapter Three

Some might have accused Scott Ryder of behaving as he did as a way to express his discontentment over his sister's fame and authority, two things that, it could be argued, would have been his if not for an unlucky twist of fate. Only a quirk of the cryobay's systems had woken Sara a few moments before Scott was to be thawed, instead of the other way around. Had he been awake first, it was entirely possible it would have been him who their father would have named Pathfinder.

Whenever such thoughts were subtly -or not so subtly, in the case of Director Tann- brought to his attention, Scott could do nothing but laugh outright. He was more than happy to leave the pressures of race-saving antics to his one-minute-elder-sibling. Having a fanatic dig through his brain so he could hook himself into a inside-out-planet-slash-super-battery hadn't been fun, and Scott had no desire to play hero. Not that he thought Sara did, but she'd proven she was just that, whether she'd admit it or not.

Besides, being the 'baby' brother of the Initiative's golden girl was better than toting a puppy around; ladies loved the adoring little brother routine.

The solid exception to that rule was one Pelessaria B'sayle. Scott might have been disappointed that such a fun, curvy armful of an asari was pretty much off his radar, except she was the best damn wingman he'd ever had. Point in case, they had only been in Vortex for half an hour before they were settled into a quiet corner booth and he had a nice armful all lined up, thanks to PeeBee. His asari cohort winked at him over the blonde head snuggled against his shoulder, and he gave her a discreet thumbs up; the blonde, still babbling happily, was none the wiser. Or so he thought- then she peered up at him through long lashes and gave him a wink.

Hooboy. This was gonna be gre-

His omnitool beeped at him.

Scott froze. There was, of course, no reason to assume that beep meant something that would pull him away from his evening. It could be one of the flood of spam messages (a whole new galaxy, and someone still thought he needed help in the pants department. Ha!), or a late-night hello from-

Another beep. On the blonde's other side, chatting up a furiously blushing engineer with blue eyes and freckles, PeeBee blinked down at her own omnitool.

It could still be nothing. There was no reason to give credence to this sudden conviction that his night was about to be ruined.

PeeBee glanced at the message, then scowled. "Your sister is calling a meeting. An emergency one. Doesn't say anything else."

Scott sighed.

At least the tram, when they boarded it, was pretty much deserted, owing to the late hour. One of the first things the engineers assigned to figuring out Meridian's secrets had focused on was controlling the light of the inside-out-planet to give people reliable day and night cycles. It was still disconcerting to look up at a 'night' sky and see, instead of stars, the glittering lights of the other side of the world.

Scott and PeeBee left the 'fun wing,' as the asari had dubbed it, and headed for the Operations Hub, pretty much still in the same place it had been when the Hyperion Center had been a ship.

Scott could hear the shouting the moment he and PeeBee exited the tramway dock and stepped out into the Operations Hub common area. He exchanged glances with his asari friend, both of them quirking eyebrows. Tann rarely shouted, though people frequently shouted at him. Sara also seldom raised her voice, at least not in anger. Unless Scott was involved, then the percentages were skewed the other direction.

"Damage control?" PeeBee said as they booked it towards the salarian's office.

"You take Sara, I'll figure out what's going on," Scott said by way of agreement. They breezed into the administration offices, and found Sara and the taller Director nearly nose to nose, both of them gesticulating wildly, just inside the main door.

"-arrested for prying into private servers far above your paygrade!"

"You should have told us! We had a right to-"

"-you do not have the authority-"

"This isn't about authority, you fish-licking-"

PeeBee spared a moment to shoot Scott a look and mouth, 'fish-licking?' at him, to which he just shrugged; insults had never been Sara's strong suit. Then the two of them split, with PeeBee interjecting herself into the building argument with her usual irreverent aplomb. Scott, meanwhile, booked it past the three of them to take the steps two at a time. On the level above, seated around the little museum-slash-office-waiting-area was just about everyone Scott considered a friend in Andromeda, plus a few extra.

"Jaal," Scott greeted the angaran, who inclined his head in a return acknowledgement. Scott couldn't exactly call a kettle black when he himself was potting around with all the asari and turian and angaran tail he could, but he'd be lying if he said he sometimes wasn't a little boggled by his sister's choice in partners. He tried not to think about it, because that led to wondering to how angaran male performance measured up to human, and then that led to thinking of equipment involved in said performance paired up with this sister and- gah. Yeah. Better to not go there. At all. Ever.

Liam raised a fist as Scott approached, and he raised his own for a brief, absentminded bump of a hello while making a mental checklist of who else was present. Pretty much the whole Tempest crew, including Suvi. Captain Dunn, Addison, Kresh, all the Pathfinders except for the asari, who was currently dispatched to track down clues to the location of the missing quarian ark. Other than her, though, everyone else of note was there. Scott gave a low whistle and shoved his hands into his pockets.

"So," he said into the tense quiet. "Who's trying to kill us now?"

Off to the side, Drack gave a loud snort. From a krogan, it was a small explosion.

"Your sister," the big veteran groused. "I'm too old to be woken in the middle of the night for anything less than a full fledged brawl. The kid owes me."

"Owes us all, if this message isn't explained soon," Vetra agreed from where she was slumped over one of the couches. Given she was a normal sized turian woman, that meant she was slumped over all of one of the couches.

"I think I know what it is she means to tell us," Suvi said. "But if I'm wrong I'll have panicked everyone for nothing."

"I hardly think this group is prone to panicking," Lexi pointed out. She had been giving Vetra pointed looks, but gave up and now reached down to hook an arm beneath the turian's legs and shove them off the end of the couch. The asari doctor settled into the newly vacated space too swiftly for Vetra to move her legs back. Vetra blinked at the doctor, then with a grunt she swung her legs across Lexi's lap. Lexi gave a resigned sigh, but didn't protest.

"I say we start guessing and taking bets. Whoever guessed closest to the real thing gets their breakfast paid for when we're done here," Liam suggested.

While Sara's people began lobbing ideas and guesses into the air, Scott pulled up his messages on his omnitool. Obviously, Sara had sent out an emergency call to everyone, ordering a midnight gathering. Scott assumed that was part of what had Tann's cloaca all cinched up; he didn't like anyone but him ordering an emergency anything. And, clearly, whatever message had been sent to everyone else had been vague.

Scott was not everyone else.

Sure enough, the message Sara had sent her twin was a bit more detailed. Scott skimmed the message, which was heavily encrypted; he needed SAM's help to read it, and assumed SAM had also been the one to encrypt it in the first place. Then he read it again, and gave a low whistle.

The sound brought the betting to a halt. Everyone glanced his way.

"You guys are gonna love this," Scott said. Down in the office entry hall, PeeBee's attempts to break up the argument had apparently fallen through; the heated tones had begun again, at volume. Scott knew his sister- when she reached that pitch, she could go for hours. He didn't feel like waiting that long.

"SAM?" Scott asked, aloud.

~Yes, Specialist Ryder?~ SAM answered, also aloud, for everyone's benefit.

"I need you to play the audio for one of the memories Sara unlocked. File 29-B Alpha."

In an effort to share a piece of their distant -and now dead- father, Sara had spent much her time in the months after the Archon's fall converting the memories stored in the AI core to something she could gift to her brother. Direct sharing, as SAM had been able to do for Sara, wasn't possible for Scott; he'd joked he didn't have sufficient brain damage.

Scott tended to joke the most about the things that terrified him the worst. Much like with thoughts of alien dong, thinking of Sara having been a literal breath behind following their father was something better not contemplated.

The result of Sara's efforts had been a handful of audio-only files that had featured not only their father's voice, but their mother's. Scott considered them, in his sappier inner moments, among his most prized possessions.

~Are you sure, Scott? That file contains references to a topic deemed Need to Know by Director Tann.~

"Fuck Tann," Addison said, in an uncharacteristic break from her normal adherence to professionalism.

"I'd rather not," Scott replied dryly. To SAM he said, "Play it, SAM."

There was a heartbeat of silence, and then the file began. Scott watched the faces of those around him shift and contort with mixtures of disbelief, horror, and incredulity.

When it was over, there was heartbeat of poignant silence.

Then, "That crazy Shepard woman was right?" Captain Dunn said, her words exploding into the stunned quiet.

"Who?" Jaal inquired.

Dunn flicked a glance to the angaran; as the only non-Milky Way former resident present, he would be the only one to not know of the rise to fame and and subsequent fall into disgrace of the household name that was Commander Jane Shepard.

Avitus Rix was the one who spoke up. "I have told you of Spectres, Jaal?"

"At great length," the angaran replied. While his tone was perfectly friendly, Scott snickered. A few others present shot Avitus wry grins; more than one of them had been subjected to the turian waxing poetic about the comparisons between the role of Council Spectre and Initiative Pathfinder.

Avitus ignored them. "Commander Shepard was the first human Spectre."

"A monumental accomplishment, then."

"Very. She got the job in part because she agreed to hunt down one of the Council's greatest embarrassments, a turian Spectre who'd gone off the grid and was attacking ships and colonies."

"Saren was only an embarrassment because the Council took his word over everyone else's for the longest time, and when he went crazy it made them look like the morons they were," Vetra said casually, stretching on the couch, non-too-subtly trying to squeeze Lexi off. The doctor glared at her, but before anything could come of the silent battle, Drack come up to grab Vetra by the shoulders and pull her more firmly to her own side of the couch, giving Lexi plenty of space. Vetra was too surprised to resist.

Avitus gave a turian equivalent of a shrug, then continued, "Shepard brought Saren down, but when the dust settled she claimed that his flagship wasn't some deadly prototype, but a living, partly organic vessel, one of countless more that were waiting in darkspace to come annihilate us all in our beds. What's more, she said that they'd done it before, that they were what wiped out the Protheans. She called them 'Reapers.'" Avitus raised his hands to mimic human air quotations.

At the turian's tone and gesture, Scott's gaze on Avitus sharpened. Apparently Dunn hadn't been the only one to be on the 'Shepard went cuckoo' team.

Jaal looked thoughtful. "I can see where your disbelief originates. It sounds very much like an angaran tale for unruly children. And yet, if this memory of Scott's father is to believed…" He trailed off, glancing in Scott's direction.

"It's not just my dad's word we have to go on," came a clear voice from the top of the steps leading down to the office entry hall. Multiple heads turned to see Sara standing there, Tann striding past her with a deep scowl on his face. In their fixation on Avitus' explanation, no one had realized the shouting from below had stopped.

"So that's what this meeting is about?" Kresh spoke up for the first time. "These 'reapers?' Forgive me for saying so, Pathfinder, but even if they turned out to be real, they're a whole galaxy behind us. I think this news could have waited til morning."

"Maybe," Sara admitted, coming to stand between her brother and Jaal, arms crossed and legs planted at shoulder width. Her eyes sparked with temper and her cheeks were still flushed from her argument with Tann, who, off to the side, was now directing his ire at Scott. Scott flashed him a cheeky grin. He felt no regret for taking the wind out of the salarian's sails.

"And maybe not," Tann continued off of Sara's one word statement, tearing his glare away from Scott to spread it evenly among the room's occupants. As offended as he was at Sara's audacity, he clearly was equally incensed that everyone she'd called had answered, unquestioningly. Doing what he could, now, to take over, Tann brought up his omnitool and synced it with the holographic display at the center of the room. At his prompting, a three dimensional rendering of a structure reminiscent of a cross between an insect and a squid flared into blue existence. For scale, a model of the Hyperion was floating beside it.

"Shortly after the Hyperion's departure from Council space, but well after everyone aboard was in cryo, the Hyperion received a transmission from the Citadel. As it was earmarked for Jien Garson only, and resources were focused elsewhere, it was not until recently that this transmission was brought to my attention. It confirms that yes, Commander Shepard's warnings were accurate. In 2186, a fleet of unknown numbers entered the Milky Way and simultaneously attacked Earth, Thessia, Palaven, and multiple other central worlds. The transmission's main message was to warn us to not turn back. If the worst were to come to pass in the Milky Way, we would be all that would be left."

Liam gave a low whistle. "You know, kinda glad we didn't know about that sooner," he said. "We had pressure enough. Look at the size of that thing!"

"Amen to that," Sara sighed. Some of the fight seemed to go out of her at last. To her side, Jaal reached out a discreet hand to take hers, and give it a mild squeeze. The whole exchange was so brief and casual, Scott doubted anyone but him gave it much attention, if any. For the first time, Scott found himself looking at the taller male with something new in mind- this guy wasn't going anywhere. Huh.

Across the room, Cora raised a hand. "Question," she said. "Still not clear on why this merited a midnight rendezvous."

"Sorry," Sara offered, and brought up her omnitool. "Promise it's important. Just a sec...pulling it up...and...there. Listen."

The bit of mangled vowels and hisses that SAM claimed was the Remnant language -the Jardaan, according to recent discoveries- hit the air. Scott supposed that if anyone could be trusted to identify Jardaan lingo, it would be the AI who'd spent the most time and processing power interfacing with Rem-tech. Thanks to SAM and recovered bits of Kett research, as well as hoarded info from the angara, they almost had a working translation matrix for the whole written language.

Still working at her omnitool, Sara said, "Last week, PeeBee found a Prothean artifact locked behind Remnant doors. Normally, that'd be odd at worst. But with the transmission Tann got -months ago, I might add- the implications are bigger."

"If the Protheans were here at some point, and are gone now, then what if the same thing that wiped them out in the Milky Way wiped them out here," Suvi said, somewhat breathlessly.

"Yeah, pretty much that," Sara confirmed. "Farfetched, I thought, until I did a lil more digging. This recording came out of the Prothean relic. SAM says it's Jardaan, not Prothean, but there's a few words mixed up in recording that I thought I recognized, so I spent all night loading Prothean translation VI's into SAM node, and between that and what we've been compiling on the Jardaan written language… Well, hear for yourselves, and I think you'll understand why I felt a little get together was in order."

Sara hit a key, and the audio file changed tempo as the message was filtered through whatever macguyvered translation VI Sara had put together overnight. Only a handful of words were distinguishable among the static and the hisses, but they had an immediate affect on the room. Suvi blanched, Cora straightened, Liam's ever-present hint of a smile faded, and Drack… Well, Drack turned and pile drived a fist through a decorative glass pane. Scott thought that reaction was particularly appropriate, though Vetra's bark of laughter wasn't far off, either.

'Reaper...weapon...kssts…out of time...Reaper...weapon...shhhffsts...Reaper...weapon...out of time…'

Sara gave the room a sheepish sort of shrug and said, "Should I send someone to pick up coffee?"

"Fuck the coffee," PeeBee replied bluntly. "I'm gonna need a drink."

"It's not that bad," Sara said. At the variety of looks she was given she added, "Really! Look, I've already had SAM working on cracking open the Prothean orb, and- here, see for yourselves."

A few keystrokes, and the half-translated message was silenced -Scott spotted Vetra and Avitus rubbing at their ear ridges- before she replaced the hologram of the Reaper and the Hyperion with something that, at first, looked like a visualized fragment of corrupted data. Fascinated, Scott found himself ambling closer, hands in his pockets. He squinted at the display, realized faintly that Suvi and Raeka were doing the same.

"It's a blueprint," the salarian Pathfinder said. "Or, part of one. For what?"

"The weapon," breathed Suvi. "It's a blueprint for the anti-Reaper weapon that message is talking about, isn't it?"

"SAM and I both think so," Sara confirmed. She seemed to hesitate, and caught Scott's eye when he looked at her. In the way that only twins could manage, they communicated without so much as a whisper or a blink. With his agreement, Sara took a breath and looked back to the people gathered and divulged another of their father's secrets. "Before launching from the Milky Way, Alec Ryder was in contact with an asari named Dr. Liara T'soni."

Off to the side, PeeBee choked. Surprised, Sara looked at her.

"You know the name?"

"The name? Yeah, you could say that. Knew the one who used it, too. We might have bumped into each other on a dig site or two. Traded a few, ah, archeological secrets, had a few philosophical exchanges, you know."

"You tried to poach her dig sites, didn't you? And she kicked your ass." Cora said, cutting through PeeBee's evasiveness. The asari blushed.

PeeBee.

Blushed.

Scott thought about taking a vid.

"In any case," Sara said, clearly as startled by PeeBee's uncharacteristic reaction as Scott was. "Our dad received a transmission after we left, one he never got to hear, I don't think. Dr. T'soni told him pretty much the same thing Tann's transmission said. Only she mentioned hope- they'd found blueprints for a weapon, too. They didn't know if they'd have time to complete it, but it was something."

"You think this is that weapon," Kresh said, sounding highly intrigued. Scott thought the day a krogan wasn't interested in some new, giant weapon design was the day the galaxy stopped spinning.

Sara gave a light shrug. "Honestly? No idea. But it's a good bet."

"Whatever it is, it's useless without the rest of the blueprint," Raeka said as she circled the hologram. "This fragment isn't nearly enough to extrapolate from. It's a shame the rest of the data is so degraded."

"I don't think it is degraded," Scott said. As people had been talking, he'd been eyeing the display. It reminded him of a puzzle piece, and he said so. "I think it's been deliberately segmented. Which means that the other pieces are elsewhere."

"You all are talking like you're planning on building the thing," Drack barked from beside the pile of ignored glass shards. "If these Reapers wanted us, they would have followed us already. Thought you people were all about opening up shop on your shiny new world. Are you looking for reasons to delay moving in?"

"We have made great progress since our peoples united," Jaal said. "But the fight for peace is far from over, my friend. The Kett have increased in aggression and ability since the Archon's fall, not decreased. If Scott says the pieces to finish this weapon are out there, I would have them found. I cannot imagine a tool of that scope being anything less than invaluable to our cause."

"Ok, great, let me just dig out my Prothean Metal Detector, and we can go sifting through the thousand or so worlds that are nearby," Liam said. "Where would we even begin?"

"Actually…" Suvi spoke up, eyes fixed on the blueprint. "That's...not so bad an idea."

"It isn't?" Liam blinked. "I mean, uh, of course it isn't. Knew that."

"When SAM tipped me off to the odd signal the orb was sending out, I was able to isolate it easily," the scientist went on as if Liam had not spoken. "It's very unique. Short ranged, but unique. I think I could come up with something to enable the Tempest to detect it once it was within a certain range."

"Do it," Tann said, in the tone that told everyone he was taking control of the gathering once more. "Even if these Reapers never show up here, which I thoroughly doubt they will, anything powerful enough to combat the ones who annihilated the relay-builders will be of tremendous help against the Kett. Dr. Anwar, how long will you be in developing this detector?"

"Hard to say," Suvi said. "I'll need copies of all the research you've done so far, Sara."

"Get started now," Tann said. "Pathfinders, be prepared to be dispatched as soon as Dr. Anwar has a working detector. I want probable search vectors developed yesterday. Ms. B'sayle, Jaal, as the closest thing we have to resident experts on the locations of Remnant sites, you will be spearheading that."

PeeBee sighed, and Jaal nodded, while Liam's hand shot into the air as he headed for the door. "I call dibs on coffee and donut duty. Message me your requests, be back in an hour."

"Here we go again," Scott said under his breath when he was close enough to Sara. She shot him a weary smile.

"You're not gonna get to sleep through this one, little brother," she told him. "I want you front and center with me."

"To pick up your slack?"

"To use your giant head as a meat shield."

"Touche." He nudged her side with his elbow, and in a more serious tone said, "Good find, sis. This could be good. Real good."

Sara looked to where her people had separated into various task groups, as easily and seamlessly as a dream. Vetra and Kresh were already looking at the blueprint portion to begin to guesstimate what materials would be needed, while Drack was getting his son-in-law on a comm channel to advise him to start recruiting muscle for big-scale work details in the near future. To the side, Suvi and Raeka were talking tech for the detector, and beside them PeeBee and Jaal were bent over a galactic map being projected from PeeBee's omnitool. The familiar sight was both heartwarming and heart wrenching.

"I should have ignored SAM and gone to the damn waterfall on Aya," Sara groused, mostly to herself. Then she sighed, punched her brother lightly in the shoulder and said, "Let's get to work."

There won't be much Scott POV in this, but here and there just to give some variety. Also, I'm really not trying to write Tann as an asshole (even if he kinda is one), because in real life I'd have to have a least a smidge of respect for the guy. He may be a bureaucrat, but he's damn good at his job, and him doing it and doing it well means someone else doesn't have to deal with it. So there's that. I guess.

Jaal/Sara goodness soon, promise!