The Nasara (Siphon's Ship)

So this continues from the old location, which will not be linked. I may be compiling a previous entries grouping somewhere down the line, but for now we'll just go with the last two posts to get the ball rolling again.


Posted by Me:

Siphon let out a short chuckle.

"I'll try not to make us go Supernova too quickly."


It seems he wasn't above a joke or two himself, and, from all signs, was in at least a slightly better mood than he had been on the planet. Then again, from the info they now knew, who could blame him for being so angry?


((Will let you do your thing with whoever you need before I funnel in Wolf's bit to tie up loose ends.))



Posted by Copper:

"Can't outrun the explosion when it's in the ship, just remember that," Lilith returns with a smirk. Given they're not needed and it isn't their ship to run, she and hers will stay out of the way. James makes it a point to hook Grunt away from the Commander, mentioning something about seeing about some grub or finding somewhere they can safely exchange a few punches in the short time it'll take them to get back to the station. Lilith, meanwhile, has the unenviable task of trying to talk to a sour-looking Jack.

"If you're just going to try and cheer me up, save your breath."

"I know you better than that, Jack. Gonna tell me what's eating you?"

"Who says there's something--"

"Because that's not your usual 'fuck with me and I'll rip your face off' expression. That's your 'I'm angry and I have nothing to direct it at' face."

"Well, aren't you just a goddamn detective." Another clue Lilith had was the fact that Jack was chaffing one of her arms. It was a tell she'd picked up when she realized punching the walls of the Normandy would only result in broken fingers.

"I won't say that it's not you, because we don't know. Be angry at them. Siphon is. You both have every right to be. Siphon just happened to get to him first."

Knowing what Jack had been through and what the Klarnell was insinuating, anything Lilith could say to comfort or reassure Jack would sound like spouting platitudes. That she knew the crew. Knew Jack. Knew they wouldn't have gone down without a fight. Without making their attackers pay dearly. Even knowing what they faced, her people would have fought to the last and probably did. Hell, they might have even been buying Jack enough time to leave the message. Or escape. There's no way they would have just shown their bellies.

Reaching out, she laid a hand on the other woman's shoulder, a simple gesture to most but one that had taken her long strides to reach with Jack. There was a twitch under her palm but Jack let her keep it there.

"Whatever happened, it's in the past. Whether it's yours or another you. And we have a history of spectacularly eradicating your past, don't we?"

Jack snorted out a laugh. "Yeah, we do." Her lips pursed some. "I didn't like hearing what that asshole had to say. I'm glad Siphon shut him up."

"None of us did, Jack. Just keep that in mind, okay?"

That earned her a glance, a look that stripped away the walls for a fraction of a moment, where the girl Jack was peeked out from behind the walls of "untouchable convict badass." "Yeah. Whatever." There was enough of a pause between the two words to hint she knew Shepard, and the others, cared. She just wasn't about to let them see it.

Lilith withdrew her hand. "Take some time when we get back to the station. Just don't break anything. Or anyone."

"God, Shepard, you've got a big a stick up your ass as your boyfriend. Hey, do you--"

"Don't even."

Jack snorted again and the two separated, Lilith watching the other girl retreat to somewhere on the ship she could relax. Maybe the Klarnell's words weren't exactly empty threats, but at least Jack wasn't going to let them weigh her down. She'd grown past that. If nothing else, it would only make her more fierce if she had to deal with them again.

After some time had passed, the ship entered Hyper-Space again. En Route they picked up the relayed message from Peltas, and began to make their way to the coordinates provided by the supposed relay.

Meanwhile, while they waited on that, Siphon called in Lilith and her group to the conference room, the message only that he had some information for them. By the time they arrived, they'd find him staring out one of the windows, seeming to be gazing off into deep space past the hyper-space tunnel.

((Simplistic to get this back up and running. Will also make a thread for the Milky Way in general for your bit Seretis))

Lilith is the first to arrive, followed shortly by the boys, and lastly Jack. Seeing the other woman, James cocks an eyebrow at Lilith who gives a barely perceptible tilt of her head. The reaction seems to satisfy him and since he's also a soldier, Siphon can tell when James goes 'at ease' even if it doesn't look like he's moved at all. He can also feel Jack's stare on him for a heartbeat or so before her attention shifts to the window.

"Something going on, Commander?" Lilith asks once they're all present and accounted for.

There was a short pause before he answered, long enough she might wonder if he'd heard her.

"I came across some information in the Klarnell device that may help us out long term, however I also discovered that the ships data core had been built into the thing as well. It looks like they were attempting to access information from it, though what I can't tell yet. Whatever it is though, it was important enough for them to send seven different 'scientists' to try and figure out."

He paused again, turning around finally, his gaze falling over to Jack.

"I also found something on one of the recordings made before main power went out for good on the ship that might ... interest you, as well as answer some questions you probably have, though it may raise another one."

He'd wait until she acknowledged him before dropping a possible bombshell.

"The Klarnell down there was lying. They didn't kill all of the crew of that ship. In fact, your duplicate survived. I found a recording stored in the ship archive showing your duplicate escaping through one of the anomalies, one the Klarnell seemed hesitant to enter. It closed before they could follow her. Somewhere out there ... In some other time period ... She may still be alive. I suspect the Klarnell lied with his insinuations hoping to goad you into taking yourself out of the fight. Big mistake on his part."


Another pause, this time as he sat down finally.

"It also appears that this variant of the Normandy may have come from a universe in which a race known as the Reapers had recently been wiped out by something even more powerful, not the Klarnell though. They referred to this race as the Nirelli. Ring any bells for you folks?"

"No shit.  Fuckers obviously didn't know me very well," Jack replies to the comment about trying to balk her out of the fight.

"And if they'd seen Loca here fight, they sure as hell'd be scared to chase after her," James quips.

Jack's gaze flicks over to him.  "There a compliment in there somewhere, Vega?"

"Maybe."  He smirks at her.

"Kids," Lilith barks slightly to get their attention back on the intel meeting.  At his news, the Commander's eyebrows arch upward.  "Wiped out the Reapers?"  To say Lilith sounds skeptical might be something of an understatement.  "It took the combined might of two fleets to barely scratch Sovereign until we short-circuited him from the inside and even then, we had heavy losses.  And you're telling me these people wiped them out?"  She looks like she might be joining Siphon in taking a chair.

"According to the information contained on this device, yes, utterly wiped them out in about a year or so. Whoever these Nirelli are or were ... from the sounds of it, they were extremely advanced, and possibly weren't entirely physical beings."


To that Aya chimed in.

"You think these Nirelli may have been ascended beings, or something close to it?"


Siphon shrugged.

"Possibly. It would explain how they were able to wipe out anyone in less than a year. Could very well be they acted similar to what the Ori once were, ascended beings guiding and misleading humanoids and giving them advanced technology, enough to slaughter their foes. Only in this case, maybe there wasn't anyone around to stop the ascended ones from flexing their power and interferring. Without a Sangrall type weapon ... no one would have a chance against that."


He paused, collecting his thoughts.

"From what I can gather, it looks like this Normandy managed to escape from that universe, passing through some form of vortex transcending dimensional barriers. Probably a good thing too, since the info I've gotten out of it suggests these Nirelli were well on the way to exterminating all life in their home galaxy. They estimated approximately forty percent of the galaxy had been wiped out, and, without some means to combat their foe ... three years to utter extinction of the entire galaxy. No one knows what they wanted, or why they came, only that they were hostile. The fact you don't recognize the name is probably a good thing, though it does make me wonder if this race exists either here or in your own home dimension. Can't say the thought sits well with me."

"That sounds an awful lot like the Reapers themselves, actually. Although their goal wasn't the extermination of life but...harvesting it in order to construct more of their kind. Could be that they have a similar goal, it just hasn't been made apparent yet. We didn't know what Sovereign was up to until we started dealing with the Collectors."

"And look how well that turned out for them," James chuckles. "You're two for two with the Reapers now, Lola. If these pendejos followed us--other us--here, then they're not going to know what hit them."

"Technically, it's two-to-three," Lilith corrects him. "And personally, I'd like to get a little more intel on them before I start with that. If that ship did belong to, well, me, then there's bound to be a reason it was here and not where it should have been."

"Unless coming here was a fluke, like with us," Jack chimes in. "Maybe we--they--weren't here by choice."

"Anything in the records talk about that?" Lilith asks Siphon. "And if they are violent enough to wipe out entire populations, somehow I think word would have gotten around already that something was going on if they're operating here."

Siphon nodded to Jack's assessment.

"All indications I've seen were they were trying to adapt some sort of technology into their systems. Probably desperate for anything to give them an edge if the situation is as grim there as they indicated. Regardless, it seems they thought they were initially dealing with a weapon, only when they managed to activate whatever device they were tinkering with, they found themselves under attack. They tried to evade and fire, there was a flash, and suddenly they were here. Or at least somewhere else anyway. Regardless, the crew was trying to figure out what happened, and seemed to be making some progress with figuring out what kind of technology they'd acquired when another ship showed up. Somehow, they ended up here at this planet, where the ship was shot down. Shortly after they were attacked by the Klarnell, though it's tough to say if the ship that initially shot them down was Klarnell or not as those data files seem to be gone. Unfortunately, whatever this device was they brought back, it vanished as well, probably taken by the Klarnell."

He turned to Lilith.

"As for what you said about the Reapers constructing more of their kind ... sounds a bit too much like the Replicators for my liking. They consumed everything in their path, materials, people etc to continue creating more of themselves. Nanite based creatures, basically machines. Wiped out entire civilizations many times, nearly wiped out the Asgard before we destroyed the last of them. Unfortunately the Asgard weren't around much longer after that, but that's a story for another time."

"So, we're mostly right. They weren't here by choice, just by chance. Too bad they don't have records on the ship that shot them down. Pity we can't revive their EDI. But then again, she might not have been unshackled like ours is. Also brings up the question as to whether or not they ran into the Klarnell by chance or if whomever shot them down is working with them as well and told them where to find the Normandy."

"From what you've said, too," James adds on, "it's no surprise the Klarnell took a device that allows them to move between dimensions. That's what we're going with, right?" He glances between Lilith and Siphon. "Them having something like that and having more time to tinker with it doesn't sound like a good thing." He just drops that elephant into the room right there.

At Siphon's comparison, Lilith shakes her head a little. "Similar but not the same. Reapers are only interested in organics. Near as we can tell, they don't use non-living material in their construction. At least they don't harvest it. But the whole 'wiping out entire civilizations' is frustratingly the same. They can, though, link up with AI and VI programs as we've seen with the Geth. About the closest thing you get to a 'converted' human is a Husk and that's what's left after they've swapped the organic aspect of a human body for a cybernetic one."

"Funny how wherever we go, there's always someone trying to eradicate someone else," Grunt chimes in. He could be making a statement or he could be waxing philosophical. Hard to tell by his tone.

"You'd be bored if there weren't," Jack chides him.

There's a pause. "Yeah," he chuckles. "You're probably right."

Siphon nodded.

"I've been trying to piece together what I can of their ships records, trying to determine if they even had an AI Computer core. So far ... I'm not having much luck. I think I've gotten about all I am going to get out of this thing. If that's because the Klarnell took things with them, or wiped it, or things were just that badly damaged ... honestly, I don't know. But I agree with James. Them having time to tinker with a possible dimension jumping device is definitely not a good thing. Although ... given the time frames ..."

He trailed off, a sour expression on his face.


Aya seemed puzzled, and then suddenly a look of horror crossed her face.

"Oh god ... you think they used that to build their numbers and that's why we didn't see them for so long, not because we tricked them?" The thought they've been attacking other realities ... I think I may be sick."


Siphon glumly nodded.

"I think we have to consider that a possibility. The time frame in which this Normandy was shot down and had been sitting there for ... it's not impossible."

"Greatest trick the devil every pulled," Lilith mutters as she seems to piece together what Aya and Siphon are getting at. "So, we're now looking at numbers bigger than estimated. Though we can hopefully take into account that the other realities likely didn't all show their bellies. However, I think it's also just as likely that they may have had success in those other realities and we might have to account for friendly races having been assimilated. At least, in that regard, we might stand a chance, since we'll know their weaknesses as well as their strengths."

Siphon nodded.

"Not to mention their tendencies, if enough of their DNA line survived the mix. But I think we have to operate on the assumption the Klarnell had enough success to justify their sudden return to our time period and dimension, though the fact they haven't done so in overwhelming numbers like the last time suggests perhaps either it hasn't yielded them the numbers they hoped for, or they've encountered enough resistance they can't deploy everything they've got yet. Or there's another piece to the puzzle we haven't seen yet. Either way, until we can possibly get more out of this device ... we've about dead ended. At the very least though ... we know more than we did about them."


They were cut off by the intercom activating in the room and a female voice coming across.

"Commander? We're approaching the coordinates left by Peltas. Sensors indicate there's only a small communications relay in the area, beyond that, it's empty."


Siphon frowned slightly.

"Odd. You're welcome to join us on the bridge if you'd like. With any luck we won't be too delayed in returning to Peltas, but we do need to check out any distress message. And now it seems figure out where it truly came from."

"We could try having EDI or Tali take a crack at it when we get back to the station. Either accessing files that you might not have been able to reach or even getting portions of it running again. You never know with those two, especially if they're working together."

She arches a brow at the information on their detour. "You're certain it's an actual distress message? Granted, I'm not the type to leave anyone floundering." That comment gets several grunts and snorts from her crew. "But...remote area, nothing on the sensors..." She knows Siphon really doesn't need to be told twice, but she's saying it anyway. And in her own way letting him know they'll be ready in the event of a fight.

Siphon nodded.

"May as well, worst that can happen is they get nothing further from it. And if they do ... well I won't complain."


He paused for a moment at her question.

"Impossible to say at this point now. Only one way to find out for sure. Even still, I agree, at the very least we need to be on battle standby."

((Figure they can talk and walk to the bridge in this go-between))

"The worst is we somehow alert the Klarnell and have to go blow up their base after they ransack the station." There's a touch of darkness in Lilith's quip. Obviously that's not what she hopes will happen but there's got to be some history for her to come up with something that specific that quickly. "Your ship, you know her best. I'm just hoping we'll actually get to help some folks out here instead of this being a wild goose chase."

There was a small snort from Siphon at the Klarnell comment, though Siphon did for just a moment seem to consider that possibility. It was gone a moment later as they shifted to the here and now.

"Agreed."


At that moment, they stepped on to the bridge, which prompted the woman they had heard a few minutes ago to turn to Siphon.

"We've arrived at the coordinates. As far as sensors can determine, there's only an old relay station here, no other ships, no planets. It looks like one of the repeaters on the relay station is daaged, that may have been why Peltas couldn't decipher the whole message."


Siphon nodded.

"Still, to be safe, keep our shields up. Try to access the relay itself, let's see if we can play the original message itself without using the repeater. In theory, unless the message itself is distorted, we ought to be able to get a clean transmission that way."

After a few moments, they'd be able to recover the message... Sort of. The interference-distortions, looking almost like static cutting into a feed. What was shown was an apparently middle-aged to older male human wearing scientific protective gear, in some sort of tech lab looking area with odd lighting. To anyone with even basic medical training, the man seemed to struggle with some kind of poisoning... and bore several marks that seemed to be energy burns.

"Thi... ...Doctor Ryan Paxton of... ...ation. Whoever can hear this... ...ease, for your own safet... ...ay! Our station commander attem... ...ess triolic radiation waves. The safeties failed and the facility is fl... ...th hazardous energies! I re... ...or own safety, please stay away!"

After finishing that last, Paxton collapsed, disappearing from the bottom of the viewing area. Given how weak the man sounded by the end of the message, it seemed likely that Paxton had succumbed to the exposure. The image shook as if an explosion occurred right before the message ended.

There's a "Sucks to be him" from Jack, which prompts some sort of chastising noise from Vega, which she pretty much ignores. Grunt simply snorts.

"Triolic radiation?" Lilith seems a little uncertain of the word. "Any ideas on how long this has been transmitting? There might be a chance at survivors if it's not long and the relay was just damaged due to the energy."

Siphon shrugged.

"Unusual. Triolic Radiation is usually found around inter-dimensional and planar rifts, but it's extremely rare. Without being able to clean more of this up, no way to know. Let's see about clearing this up some."


For a time, everyone started working, though no matter what they tried, nothing seemed to work. After enough plays of the transmission though, Aya tilted her head.

"Odd ... that Paxton guy ... he reminds me of Victor, only much older. I wonder if that's his father?"


Siphon, who'd been in mid computer type suddenly froze, standing there silently for several moments. Abruptly, he erased what he was working on and began inputting new parameters, muttering something under his breath.

((Decided to make it go one more post at least before the reveal. Also Wolf, I'll call you tomorrow, we may need to revise our plan after I re-read the old threads.))

"Sounds like we've got people messing with things they shouldn't be," James remarks, earning him a glance from Lilith, which, in turn, earns her a raised eyebrow. Neither expands on the matter.

"Given what we've been seeing regarding rifts, I'm almost tempted to suggest that is your friend Victor," Lilith chuckles after the observation. "But unless he's operating under an assumed name, you could be right."

Since none of her current crew has met Victor, they don't exactly have further input on the matter. For the time being, the Normandy folk are content to stay out of the way and let the Nassara crew do their thing.

There was a slight chuckle from Aya, followed by her watching as Siphon began inputting new parameters into the system.

After a few minutes, he made a triumphant sound, turning back to the display.

"Let's see what happens when we play it now."


The message played, and periodically a symbol would appear in the visual. After a few of them, Aya shook her head.

Clever ... those are gate symbols. It's a Stargate address."


Siphon though frowned.

"An address that doesn't exist. At least not one with a Stargate,"


Now it was Aya's turn to frown.

"Well that's ... wait ... Couldn't we convert that to spacial coordinates instead of a Gate address?"


Siphon paused for a moment before grinning.

"Yes, yes we can. Give me a few minutes here."


Aya for her part turned to the others.

"So if I'm understanding this right, there is no Triolic Radiation. This was a cover to hide the real message. Someone went to a lot of trouble to hide those coordinates in a way that ... well I'm not even sure how Siphon knew how to get that up there. The question now is why?"


Siphon, while still working replied, "something Ravage said once or twice about his people making use of intentional 'interference' in communications bands to encode transmissions so that only they could decipher them. I'd almost forgotten about it until you mentioned Victor's name. But I agree, why? Either it's them, and there's some big secret they only want us to know about ... or we just stumbled across a leftover faction of Ravage's people, at which point ... this could get ugly fast based off what I know. Either way, we'd better be prepared for something big, and possibly dangerous once we get wherever these coordinates will take us."

Lilith listens to the exchange before offering her input. "Shouldn't we contact this friend of yours, too? All things considered. I mean, this is his father, isn't it? Or his people?"

"And if you think it's gonna get ugly, then let's have some information," James chimes in. "Sounds like you're anticipating a throwdown, so I, for one, would like to know what we're up against. Had enough surprises the last time. Come to think of it," he adds, "there a place around here we can scrounge up some more ammo? I was going through clips like crazy on those damn...whatever they weres."

Siphon sighed.

"If I knew how to contact him yes, that would be a good idea. Unfortunately he's prone to flying off to handle things of his own and leave no contact means for us, he'd just return later. And as far as we know, he has no other people, at least if he does, he doesn't know about them, nor do we."

He paused before turning to James, a devious smile on his face.

"That's what the cloaking device is for. We'll cloak and then fly into the system. We can them remote rig a cloaked jumper to fly in and do recon for us, record what it see's. If they detect it, well no risk to anyone as it'll be unmanned. And we'll still be far enough away to make a hyper-space jump if someone decides they want to take shots at us long before they can actually get to us. As for ammo ... Aya, you may want to show him the replication units."


Aya nodded, indicating for James to follow her. In response to his other question she sighed.

"Klarnell future predator pets. Feel lucky that ammo was all you lost after dealing with them."


((Going to give them a chance to respond before I have them jump to the planet and make a new thread for it. Also, not sure when I'll get to update again, moving tomorrow morning.))

((Given how sporadically I reply, I'm not worried.))

And if this was his father and going off on his own was a habit of his, then telling him probably wouldn't be a good idea anyway. If she found out something of that magnitude, she'd probably go investigate it herself, too.

"Lola. Tiny." James will gesture to their weapons and get Lilith's rifle and Grunt's shotgun before he heads off with Aya. "Yeah, those things seem like bad news. We deal with any more of them, we're probably gonna want to have Jack or the Major around. Preferably both. Then they can throw 'em around for us." He waits until they're out of earshot of the others. "Though I'm getting the impression we want to keep Jack away from these Klarnell?"

Aya nodded in response, waiting until they were well out of earshot before verbally responding.

"Absolutely. For that matter any of the women in your crew. The Klarnell don't care about looks, only viability. Frankly, we got lucky there, that one didn't appear to be armed for a raid, more like it was armed as a scout than anything. He was also small for a Klarnell too, one of the smallest I've ever seen, though admittedly, I didn't see much of them up close and personal like that."


As they spoke, there was a sudden shimmer and a slight noise, making Aya pause for a moment.

"Just came out of hyper-space. We'd better get you stocked up."


She led him to an odd looking dispenser in the wall, and input a few commands, which brought up an interface he'd likely recognize. All he'd need to do would be to input exactly what he needed it seemed.


((Making new thread for the planet part of this.))