IOA Catherine Langford & SSV Normandy
Location: Coruscant geosynchronous orbit
Current objective: disseminate and obtain mission intelligence
SSV Normandy, bridge"Well, we better take a picture so we can make the council jealous. Citadel's got nothing on this." Was the line that finally ended the silence that permeated on the bridge as soon as Coruscant entered line of sight of the viewports.
The commander rolled her eyes. "Take a picture Joker, it will last longer."
"EDI?"
"Intelligence gathering protocols are already in effect, Jeff."
Nodding, Shepard keyed her armor's comms: "Traynor, give me local area communications... Thanks. Relief fleet, SSV Normandy. We have arrived on station and are ready to proceed."
The answer came immediately: "Normandy, Langford. Assemble your away team for strategic briefing on the Warspite. If you require transportation, broadcast this signal from the immediate vicinity of your away team when ready."
"Warspite? Big shoes to fill there. Shuttle is ready ma'am." LT. Cortez reported.
"Langford, Normandy. Thanks, we'll handle our own transportation. Warspite, Normandy. Requesting landing vector for our shuttle, over." Shepard radioed over, turning tothe rest of the crew still gawking at the planet sized city, "Miranda, James, suit up. Kaidan, you have the con."
IOA Langford, BridgeThe pieces were now on the board, but the level of infestation of the planet below had Catherine worrying about their timeframe. The replicators might start forming into ships any minute now. "Let's get to it. We don't gave the layout of the Warspite so we're taking the Gateship. Phil, grab some locator beacons so we can set up transfer points on the other ships, we may need to move around or evacuate them in a hurry."
Warspite, briefing room"What a dump. Even your initial attempt had more style than the interior of this ship. To not mention the state of repair it is in. I suppose your ascended compatrion wants to give us a challenge?" Ariadne grumbled in Catherine's head.
"Behave, dear. Think of it this way, you will get to awe them if they come over at any point." the captain tried to 0lacate the symbiote. She could feel Ariadne's mood momentarily improved, until they met an officer from the colonial fleet.
"We will not be awing anyone dressed as we are. I understand your point that my usual outfits show too much skin, but would it have hurt you to wear your dress uniform? We look like we just enlisted."Catherine sighed.
"In the last 24 hours, I have been shot and almost died, learned that the woman I was falling for was killed, blended with her symbiote so that we both didn't also die, discovered FOUR spies on my ship and volunteered for an interdimensional mission to save an unprepared galaxy from becoming replicator chow. I am entitled to be comfortable.""Hmrghh..."They made their way to the briefing room and sparing only a glance at the others, walked straight to the head of the room, while Dr. Lawson set up four locator beacons around the corners of the room. "Is everyone present?" Kat asked.
"We were the last to arrive so far and we're here." A redhead with powered armor answered. Commander Shepard. Black had to admit her universe's sheppard had nothing on her. "Good, then let's begin."
A white shimmer appeared in front of every delegate, Langford's asgard transporter now guided by the locators depositing the briefing materials.
"As you may have been told, the enemy we face comes out of a universe similar to the one the Langford originates from, albeit temporally in the pst compared to our timeline. In our timeline, we have already defeated this enemy on a planetary scale several times, and once on a galactic scale. I will go over the various strategies that were employed in the past. If you wosh to learn about the technical and technological side of the enemy, you have the dossier in your materials.
A hologram appeared in the middle of the room, displaying a barren planet with brown atmosphere. "Our first planetary engagement with the replicators was the Asgard homeworld Halla. The planet has been abandoned by the Asgard and completely consumed by the Replicators, the block forms of which have made a secondary crust on the planet's surface. The situation was almost resolved by the asgard using gravity and temporal manipulation to collapse Halla's sun into a black hole and trapping the replicators in a time dilation field.
This strategy was hampered by the unexpected evolution of the humanform replicators. They were able to defeat the time dilation device and wscape the trap. Given that we are aware of at least one humanform replicator existing on the planet, the significant technical difficulties and the collateral damage, we're calling this plan Variant 3."
The hologram shifted to another planet. "The escaping replicators made landfall on Orilla, the new Asgard capital. An member of Stargate Command who had at the time the knowledge library of our precursor civilization downloaded into their brain was able to devise an energy weapon that disrupts the subspace bonds holding individual blocks or nanite cells of the replicators together.
This weapon has then beed scaled up on an asgard ship and used to bliterate vast swathes of replicators at the same time. This has however allowed two humanform replicators escape in a blockform ship. One of these would eventually develop a cipher to render our weapon ineffective. As far as we know, the local replicators have not progressed so far and may still be unaware of it's existence. This is our Variant 2."
The hologram then zoomed out to display the entire Milky Way. "The immunized replicators almost overrun our galaxy, but we were able to reconstruct their immunization method and develop a countermeasure. Our local network of FTL travel gates was then used to hit the entire galaxy all at once.
Now, given the need to strike the entire replicator mass in short span of time both to prevent developing immunity and escaping, my people have developed the planetary-wide anri-replicator weapon. It is a constellation of satellites capable of launching the disruptor wave across the entire planet. This is our variant 1. If noone has hetter ideas, Langford has the designs for the satellites. All production capable ships as well as any republic assets that can be mobilized need to be put on this task, as to cocer the planet the size of Coruscant, a constellation of about 2000 satellites will be needed."
The hologram then finally shifted into another planet most resembling Coruscant. "Our final engagement was with a planet unrelated to the previous replicator faction, composed of entirely humanform replicators. As we do not know if Sixth is building more bretheren, this may become important in time.
With limited resources, the PWARW could not be deployed over Asuras in time. Alternative method was found by dialling up the attraction of the nanite cells, which caused all of the nanites around the planet to form into a single superdense entity, which then sunk into the planet where the pressure caused it to undergo proton-electron recombination and explode, along with the planet."
Shutting the simulation down, colonel Black looked over the assembled dignitaries: "Questions and notes?"