Chapters: 3/30
Fandom: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Evfra de Tershaav/Female Ryder | Sara, Evfra de Tershaav/Ryder, Cora Harper & Female Ryder | Sara, Evfra de Tershaav & Moshae Sjefa
Characters: Evfra de Tershaav, Female Ryder | Sara, Ryder (Mass Effect), Cora Harper, Jaal Ama Darav, Reyes Vidal, Alec Ryder, Moshae Sjefa
Additional Tags: Enemies to Lovers, Slow Burn, Denial of Feelings, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Post-Canon, Forbidden Love, Found Family, Canon Era, mutual respect, Enemies to Allies, Emotional Trauma, Emotional Intimacy, Slow Build, Slow Romance, Character building, multiple POVs, Political Alliances, Initiative Politics, Angara Politics
Summary:
She’s not happy with the universe.
Still reeling from the death of her mother, Sara Ryder is completely blindsided when the remaining tatters of her family sit her down to tell her they’re hauling ass 2.5 million light-years away.
But hey, exploring a new galaxy is a pretty darn cool idea, and what else does she have to lose?
Hot tip; don’t ask the Universe if that’s the worst it could do, because the answer has always been and always will be, no.
Or, a slow-burn fic focused on the romance we all wished we had; Evfra. (Includes a brief Reyes Vidal romance but that doesn’t pan out)
Mass Effect Andromeda Appreciation Week Day 4: The Andromeda Galaxy
The Moshae approaches the huge door of the vault. You follow closely behind her. “Jaal has been telling me about his experience with your crew,” she says in a casual tone.
“All good things, I hope.”
“He’s quite taken with you.” She glances at you out of the corner of her eye with a sly smile.
“He told me he feels he’s making a difference,” you say. “I’m glad he finds the work we’re doing rewarding.”
“As am I.” The Moshae puts her hand on the door’s controls. After a moment, the door opens for her.
“You can operate the door?” you ask, with raised brows. You’d known that there were angara that could operate pieces of Remnant tech. You hadn’t realized the Moshae was one of them. You probably shouldn’t have been so surprised; how else was she supposed to get in?
“It took me many years to figure it out, but yes,” she replies. “I wasn’t sure I could still do it.”
The pair of you walk down the wide corridor. There’s no sign of Remnant machines, but it looks like the plantlife of Aya has made itself at home, even in the darkness of the ruin. Spots of bioluminescent lichen dot the walls and floor.
“I haven’t brought anyone here in over twenty years,” the Moshae muses as you enter the next room. It’s massive, if beginning to break down. The left wall has crumbled, and some kind of large fern has sprouted in the exposed soil. The Moshae leads you to the controls of a holographic emitter at the center of the room. “There’s always been an active display for Aya, but we could never affect it.”
You smile. “You must be even more excited about this than I am,” you comment as you extend your hand over the control panel. SAM activates your omnitool, and the display for the vault network appears–a massive starmap that covers the entirety of the Heleus cluster.
“Good job,” you silently comment to SAM. He doesn’t respond.
The Moshae observes the starmap, expression rapt. “Yes! This is new!”
You’ve seen a map like this before, but it’s still amazing to you. There’s so many vaults, connected together with lines like constellations. How widespread was angara territory supposed to be? The scale of the Jardaan terraforming operation is mind boggling, and they had to have done it over the course of less than a couple hundred years. The Initiative’s maps of the Andromeda galaxy are over six hundred years old now, but they were nearly contemporary when they were made. The geth-technology-based surveys they were made with wouldn’t have missed activity on this scale, which means that the vaults can’t be older than six hundred years. But angara history has no record of their construction, so the Jardaan had to have been gone for at least four hundred years. Are they still out there somewhere? Is it even okay that you plan to take some of these planets for your own people when they were terraformed specifically for the angara?
It has to be; you’ll make it alright if you have to, make your presence worthwhile to the angara. Your people’s survival depends on those worlds.
You study the starmap; there are three larger symbols in addition to the connected dots of vaults. The largest is the symbol of Meridian: an equilateral triangle with a short leg radiating from each of the corners. Then there are two unembellished equilateral triangles: one solid, and one only a blinking outline. The solid one is in the correct position to be Aya. You reach up to tap it, hoping the display is interactive. The symbol becomes larger and brighter–highlighted. You’re not sure what to do with it.
“Is it similar to the vault on Eos?” the Moshae asks behind you. “Tell me, what are you seeing?”
“Very similar,” you answer. “SAM, could you overlay this starmap with the one we saw on Eos? I want to see the differences.”
The display of your omnitool changes immediately. You hold it up for the Moshae to see. The only things not on both maps are the triangle around Eos’ dot and the symbol of Meridian. “There,” you point to Meridian. “That wasn’t on the Eos map. The vaults on the network all connect to this place. It has to be the control center.”
The Moshae leans in to see your omnitool, then looks up at the large starmap in front of you. “This image was on a relic the Archon showed me. He called it Meridian. And it looks like Aya’s vault is the only one that’s fully connected to it.”
“The vault on Eos is also present, but changed,” SAM points out through your omnitool speaker. “Our interfacing with it has affected its connection.” He’s right; the triangular outline around Eos blinks as though the connection is erratic, but it is active.
“Is that your AI?” the Moshae asks, looking at your omnitool. “The one who blew up the exaltation facility?”
“Oh, yes,” you respond. “That’s SAM. He’s the reason I can interface with Remnant technology.”
“Hello, Moshae Sjefa,” SAM says.
“Hello,” the Moshae offers before going back to examining the starmap, bringing up her own wrist tool and pointing it at the map.
“What about Habitat 7, SAM?” you ask. Your father did something to the vault on that planet, you just weren’t sure what.
SAM highlights a dot on your omnitool. “Active connection to Meridian is either not established, or not detectable from Aya or Eos.”
“But my father did something to make the storm clear,” you say, trying to make sense of it.
“The storm was most likely the result of malfunctioning terraforming equipment,” SAM states. “By resetting the vault, your father was able to force the vault to stop exacerbating the storm, but likely did not reestablish its connection to Meridian.”
“Okay then.” You think for a moment. “Could you highlight the other habitats the Initiative identified? Are they all on this map?” They should be; but you should probably show Initiative leadership the evidence if they haven’t already figured it out themselves.
SAM highlights six additional dots, including Eos. You recognize the location of Voeld. The rest of them must be Havarl, Kadara, Elaaden, and the broken world that would have been the turian habitat if it hadn’t been destroyed by the Scourge. You’re going to need to visit all of them.
“So what this means is we need to get to Meridian,” you comment. “We can reactivate all the vaults from there, make them start terraforming again. We could fix what the Scourge broke; make these planets habitable again.”
“Wait,” the Moshae interjects.” The Archon knows where it is. He’s already been there.”
Or he just thinks he has. “If he was able to use it,” you reply grimly, “he would have tried to use the terraforming network to make the planets less habitable, to drive anyone living on these planets into space for easier capture. Since he hasn’t done that, either he doesn’t know how, or Meridian isn’t functional.”
“Of course…” the Moshae says as though talking to herself, “that’s why he tortured me. He thought I could help him use it.
“If he figures it out, all of us are in trouble. We have to take it from him.” You want to be unambiguous about your intentions with the Moshae.
“Agreed. Such power in the hands of such evil could mean the end of all of us.”
You’ve intercepted messages that would seem to indicate that the kett are very anti-AI, so you’re pretty sure you have time before they make any kind of breakthrough, but just to be clear, you say, “I’m going to stop him, for all our sakes.”
The Moshae gives you a firm angaran nod. “I will assist.”
“SAM, does this starmap give us an accurate location for Meridian?” you ask, knowing the answer is probably no.
“Unlikely,” SAM replies. “The metadata does not contain coordinates for Meridian the way it does for other locations on the map, and Meridian’s symbol on this map does not correspond with any known star system. It appears to be outside the galaxy’s ecliptic plane. It is possible that Meridian is not located in a star system, but it is more likely that this is an abstract representation for a control center that is designed to be mobile.”
“So we’re going to need to find it,” you confirm.
The Moshae makes a noise of comprehension. “You’re going to need that relic I saw. The Resistance might have intel on the whereabouts of the Archon’s ship. I’ll talk to Evfra and secure his full cooperation. Meet me there.”
While I love Jaal I always side with Moshae Sjefa when it comes to destroying the facilty of Voeld. I just believe she is right and sometimes sacrifices have to be made.
