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The Arrival


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Re: The Arrival

((Well, you're the one who said they had an idea to get them involved. I mean, stargate, right there, but Lil and co. don't have a reason to go help with the fight just yet. Figured you had something planned in that sense.))
 

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Re: The Arrival

Before any of them could respond, the man at the console blurted out, "wait, say that again Andrews?"

A brief pause as Julia turned back to him, likely drawing the attention of the others as well, followed by the young man blinking, and explaining.

"Uh ... Colonel Andrews reports Mirvik is dead but ... well, evidently there's something that looks a lot like a T-Rex on the planet that just ... ate Mirvik."


That drew a blink from Julia.

"What? There's nothing like that on that planet. What the hell is going on over there?"

"I don't know, his unit is moving to investigate but ... they're getting odd magnetic readings."
 
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Kaidan and Lilith exchanged looks at that report. Clearly the core of the statement didn't resonate with their companions but between the two humans, it caused raised eyebrows.

"A tyrannosaurus? Did I hear that right?" That from Kaidan, though it seemed to be the question on Lilith's mind as well.

"And one that's not supposed to be there. Or, well, anywhere. Though I suppose things could be different here."

The plan was to listen, at least for the time being, and let Julia and her people get reports.

"I'll admit. I'm a bit curious."

"You want to walk into the middle of a firefight, Major, be my guest. Until then, I'm staying here."

"You have no sense of adventure, Commander." His grin was countered with a snort.
 

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"Evidently yes, and from the sounds of it, a rather hungry one. Seems like Mirvik's forces are on the menu today. It's literally eating them all, and for the time being, seems to be ignoring our own troops. And just when I thought things couldn't get any stranger..."
 
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Julia might hear Lilith mutter "Welcome to every day of my life" though she doesn't out and out say it, clearly not wanting to belittle the other woman but just given what she's seen, the station commander might get the idea of Lilith having been around a turn or two...of the switchback variety.

Her actual comment is "At least it's focusing on the bad guys? And we don't have to worry about it showing up here?"
 

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Julia half chuckled, half shook her head, not disagreeing with that statement.

"Yeah, fortunately it can't travel through the gate."

There was a brief pause before the young man, who's name still had yet to come up, shook his head and started speaking again.

"Colonel Andrews says there's some kind of glowing orb with what seems to be glass swirling in it that the T-Rex came from. Images coming in now."


On the display screen would show what did in fact appear to be a golden glowing orb of massive size, with what seemed like shards of white glass swirling inside. Whatever exactly it was, one thing was clear. It was some sort of portal, or something akin to one if the T-Rex had come through it.

"What in the ... I've never seen anything like that at all, I don't think anyone here has. How about you or your crew Commander?"
 
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Lilith listened to the description and cocked her head slightly, studying the images that appeared on the monitor.

"It reminds me of a few of the Prothean artifacts we've seen, though those looked solid from the outside. EDI? You getting this? Anything you can pull up?"

"No data available." That from Legion.

"Reminds me a little of a combat drone," remarked Tali. "Though that's clearly not its intent."

"My apologies, Commander, but I can find no reference to anything similar in my databases. Given the apparent nature of the anomaly, in person study would be required to obtain any further or relevant data. If I might hazard a guess from what's already been reported, there may be some sort of temporal fluctuation happening."

"You're saying it's a time portal?" Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of incredulousness in Kaidan's voice.

"Study will have to wait, EDI. Not like it's the first hot zone we've been dropped into but then, we'd always had an exit plan."
 

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There was a moment of silence before Julia responded.

"Well, if it is a temporal vortex of some kind it'd explain the T-Rex. What it doesn't explain though is how an animal from Earth's past ended up on a planet at the very fringe of this galaxy, thousands of light years away, not to mention a planet with no fossil record to indicate anything remotely close to that ever existed there. Which'd make it transverse not only time, but space as well, possibly on the subspace level like the Stargate. It also doesn't explain the massive magnetic field it's generating."

She too seemed a bit skeptical, but it wasn't showing as much. Possibly because she'd seen things stranger, or because they knew time travel was possible, after all, she'd brought that and dimension hopping up earlier.

"Have the Colonel get as many readings as he can safely. We'll comb through the data when they get back."

She turned to Lilith and added, "I'll have a copy of it sent over to your ship so EDI can look at it too. Can't hurt too have more eyes looking it over. You know, I wonder if your ship encountered something like it that breached dimensional barriers and that's what brought you here. I'll have our patrol ships start scanning for something like that around here."
 
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"EDI can probably bring up logs of what was going on in and around the ship at the time of our jump through the mass relay. I won't rule out the possibility that there was an anomaly when we made our return trip. Kind of had to get out of the way of an explosion. And fast."

"You think we went through one of these instead of the relay, Commander?" Tali sounded moderately intrigued.

"Again, I'm not ruling anything out yet. I'll have you look over the readings with EDI. See if you can come up with anything."

"I can also provide coordinates for the station's patrols to give them an idea on where to begin looking."
 

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Julia nodded.

"Explosion racing, wonderful. I've dealt with my fair share of that myself, always nerve wracking that. And that would be incredibly helpful, we could focus on a smaller area of space. Even if it's not still open, we might be able to at least get an idea of what we're dealing with, and if more are going to potentially be an issue. At least I hope we can. Although what bothers me is that it seems you didn't time jump so much as dimensional, or at least that's my theory. So we might be talking different types of these anomalies as well."
 
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"You can talk to Joker about that."

"At least doing it in a ship," cuts in Kaidan.

"You're not going to let me live those down, are you?"

"With all due respect, Commander, not a chance."

"I've disabled more things than I've let blow up, you know."

"And I'm sure that's a ringing endorsement for our new friends." Somehow hearing Tali say that made the statement more amusing.

Again, Lilith's expression seemed more a long-suffering mother than irritated or angry at her companions. "EDI, can you transfer the relevant data to the station? See if we can't start helping instead of making nuisances of ourselves?"

"I've been compiling it since the idea was brought up. It should transmit shortly, provided there's nothing in place to keep me from doing so."

"Anything else you think might be helpful?" The last question seems more addressed to Julia than her squad.
 

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Julia seemed to be stifling the urge to laugh, probably needing a good one if the current situation were anything close to a normal day at the office.

"There shouldn't be anything blocking your transmission, and to answer your question, I'd say best thing to that would be any sensor readings around your ship taken between the time you departed wherever you last were, and coming into contact with our ship. Whatever happened seems likely to have occurred in transit, rather than while you were stationary at a space station, or wherever you departed from."
 
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"I'll do my best, though it will likely be the result of cursory scans, since I was devoting much of my energy to maintaining the integrity of the ship while we were through the Omega-Four relay. Relevant data should be arriving shortly." A pause. ""And possibly some not so relevant, at least to us. Though it may make more sense to you."

"Thanks, EDI. Probably best if we take a break and let your people pick through the data. Anywhere we won't be in the way? Or can maybe get a drink? Preferably coffee. Or something stronger?"
 

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Julia nodded.

"Anything you have will be appreciated, thank you. As for your question on food and drink, there's a mess hall a deck down and near the center of the station that serves pretty much any cuisine we've encountered. Earth food and other planet's foods, as well as drinks. There really isn't anywhere you'd be in the way so to speak save for maybe my personal office, although that's more because it's not exactly large enough to fit every single one of us into it."
 
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Given that EDI now seems to be linked to the station's computers, the data will transmit rather quickly to whatever terminal seems the most likely candidate to receive such things, allowing those more familiar with the information to analyze it.

"I'll inform my crew of the situation. Give them some time to get acclimated. I'll also assess the damage to the Normandy and we'll see what we can do to get her patched up and flightworthy again. Thank you, Commander. I realize this is a lot just dumped on you." Julia will receive a salute from Lilith, followed by one from Kaidan as well. "By your leave."

Unless Julia has anything more, Lilith's party will make their way back to their ship, EDI chiming in now and again with directions so they needn't bother any of the station's crew or residents.

"What are you going to tell them, Lil?" Kaidan glanced over at her as they walked.

Her shoulders sagged a little. "The truth. They knew going into this that we were on a suicide run. That there might not be any coming back from this. We survived, but..."

"Hey, there's still a chance we'll see home, right?" He eased closer, lightly checking her shoulder with his. "C'mon. You're Commander Shepard. Impossible is normal for you, right?"

She chuckled. "Thanks, Kaidan."

Hopefully he was right.

***

Once back on the Normandy, the first order of business was taking stock of the damage. In spite of the new plating, the Collector's had managed to score several hits onto the ship's hull. Most of it appeared to be superficial, but there were a few spots that would need patched up. The biggest problem was the hole that had been punched into the docking bay. That was going to need fixed, not to mention the interior of the ship had suffered extensive damage from their firefight as well.

"She held together when it counted, Commander," Joker informed her as she passed the datapad back to him. "Not exactly sure if they're gonna have the spare parts we need lying around but the galaxy's a big place. If we can't find the exact parts, we'll see if we can't come up with something similar. Not like we're going to be making that run again, after all."

"There is that." Thank goodness for small blessings. "I need to talk to the crew." She started off, then paused and turned. "I don't think I thanked you, Joker. You--and EDI--did a hell of a job in the relay. If it had been anyone else, I don't think we'd have made it back."

He ducked his head, tugging his cap down a little lower. "Just doing my job, Commander. But, ah, remember. Gold medals, not silver."

"You just might have earned a few this time." She grinned and headed to the CIC, where she'd requested the crew gather for the announcement. Looking at those gathered there, she took a breath and made her announcement.

"As many of you were aware, there weren't plans for us to make it back through the Omega-Four after we headed in after the Collector's. Thanks to all of you, we managed what everyone said was impossible. The Collector threat has been stopped." She paused, smiling a bit as some cheers piped up from the crew. Once they quieted down, she continued. "Our return trip, however, brought about some...complications. We're still trying to figure out why, but the Omega-Four didn't return us to Citadel space. It didn't even return us to Alliance or Council space. We are, in effect, somewhere else and yet, we currently reside within the Milky Way."

She let the questions and clamor rise up, catching the bulk of the concerns. Holding up a hand, she waited for quiet again. "I wish I had more concrete answers. We are looking into it. However, we are effectively stuck here until we can figure out a way to duplicate the apparent phenomenon that brought us here. Our hosts are looking into it, but this may be even beyond their scope right now. I had hoped to bring you all home after everything. For now, this is going to be home. The station we are at, Peltas-Five, is something of a hub, not unlike the Citadel. They are xeno-friendly but even in my short tour, there are quite a few differences. But I know you. Know my crew. You'll adapt. I know you will." She paused again, looking over those gathered. "Dismissed."

Many of the crew broke off to process the information they'd been given. Some approached her and she gave what reassurances she could. Her team, however, weren't going to let her off the hook so easily. Rather than retreating to her cabin, she headed for the conference room where they could gather and air out their opinions on the situation.

"Did we hear you right, Lola? We're in some sort of...alternate...space?" James was the one to drop the elephant into the room once they'd all gathered.

"Near as I can figure, yes. We compared maps with the information they have here and while the overall remains the same, everything's just...different."

"For one thing, there's no Asari here," Kaidan chimed up. "And I'm willing to bet a lot of the other races don't have homeworlds, either."

"That is somewhat troubling. Though we've managed to function without their assistance thus far." Thane was as quick to assuage the situation as bring up the problem.

"Right now, we're limited to our own data and what can be provided through the station. Interestingly enough, EDI and Legion seem able to access data that is relevant to this...reality in addition to our own. We won't exactly be out of the loop but expect quite a bit more cultural differences."

"What's the plan, then, Shepard? We just sit around? Wait for this to right itself? Or we gonna do something about it?" Knowing Zaeed, he probably was going to get a bit more colorful, but he was getting better at reigning that in. Now if only Jack would follow his example.

"We're going to let the station look over the data compiled when we came back through the relay. They seem to think that whatever happened, happened then. Mordin, if you want to offer your services, I'd like to have one of mine going over what they find."

"Certainly. Chance to study new phenomenon. Knowledge limited. Feeling quite up to challenge after Collector situation."

"Is a puzzlement," she offered up, sharing a smile with the Salarian, who understood her reference. "I wouldn't say they've pretty much given us run of the station, but if you want to get out, stretch your legs, hit the mess, consider this extended shore leave. Just remember that you're still representing the ship while you're out there. And me."

The group broke off after that, save Garrus, who lingered in the room with her. "Not quite the homecoming we were expecting, is it?"

She shook her head. "I'd hoped, after that fight, to just see it all done. Now we're adrift. Like we never made it back through."

"But we did. You brought us all back. Sure, we've managed to take one hell of a detour, but you got us all out of there alive, Lil. That counts for something in my book."

She allowed herself to lean against him, feeling his arm drape over her shoulders. "Thanks, Garrus. I hope we can get through this."

"We will. Because we have you and you have us. Now, you've just turned Grunt and Jack loose among an unsuspecting populace. Maybe you ought to go rectify that situation." He brought his forehead down, tapping it lightly against hers.

"Good point. And I could use a drink." She paused. "We're going to look into supplies for you and Tali. Right now, you probably want to keep to what's on the ship. Until then--"

"I'm a grown boy, Lil. I can take care of myself. Tali, too."

"I know, but you're mine to worry over."

"We'll be fine. Go get drunk." He chuckled, patting her on the shoulder and giving her a little shove to motivate her out the door.

"To new horizions," she breathed softly, following her crew to the airlock.
 
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