Shepard glanced to his left, over Joker's recently paled face, and to Tali's wide eyes visible through her faceplate. He watched her for a long moment and clenched his teeth quietly, his mind hitting a sudden halt over her silent wonder and intense fascination.
The Commander of the Normandy slowly looked back to his readout, sitting in the co-pilot's chair as he was, and his lips downturned in a similar level of concern as his pilot. There were well over ten thousand ship signatures active in orbit of Rannoch, ranging from small troopships to gargantuan dreadnoughts.
When Shepard had issued the order to investigate Rannoch, Tali had given him a rundown on what to expect of Geth deployments. The initial scans when they arrived with their stealth systems active had confirmed the first element of Tali's description of the sheer number of ships that would likely be present. The Quarian's Intel had become useless beyond that first point of detail.
Where Tali had described that there would more than likely be various networked webs of Geth ships arranged at all five Lagrange points for optimal defence. Shepard hadn't had trouble imagining that, the Systems Alliance used the same strategy for Earth defence for the simple measurements of it providing sufficient coverage of planetary approach and out-system visibility.
But that hadn't been what they'd found in the Quarian home system. Rather than the expected five, there were only two clusters of ships in the system. One was comprised of at least eight-thousand vessels in a grid-like formation at Lagrange point two on the orbital outer of Rannoch away from the local star, and the others' in a mix of high and low orbit of Rannoch which consisted primarily of troop transports and destroyers.
Added to that was the energy readings which confirmed that there were at least two Collector cruisers parked on the planets' surface. Shepard glanced from his display to Joker, and the pilot glanced back at him and forced a playful smirk, which still looked forced despite his best –or partial- efforts, "This should be fun... So we gonna wrap ourselves in big red sashes and go present ourselves to them like a gift? Heh..." His eyes crinkled in something between mirth and anger, "We're gonna die! Heh-heh..."
Shepard grunted a sound of annoyance, but couldn't exactly deny Joker's simplified and derisively stated thoughts. Tali, on the other hand, lightly cuffed the pilot over the top of his head, "Bosh'tet!" She hissed, "We're going to work out how to deal with the Collectors, and we'll win."
"Probability is not in our favour, Tali'Zorah," EDI's synthetic tone admonished before it lifted with a hint of curiosity, "However, your observations about expected Geth behaviour coincided with my own expectations. This behaviour, as well as the Collectors presence, suggests that the Collectors somehow have control of the Geth."
Shepard narrowed his eyes and peered from his display to the canopy with Rannoch consuming half of the view, a small area glinted with reflective metal where the Geth fleet at Lagrange point two orbited peacefully.
He shook his head slowly, "We can't ignore this..."
"Of course we can't!" Tali stated anxiously, "This is Rannoch! If the Collectors are controlling the Geth, maybe we can somehow take that control and shut them down?"
Joker scoffed and dramatically threw his hands up, almost slapping Tali's mask in the process and making the Quarian narrow her eyes at the pilot, "Right, of course! I forgot..." He scoffed again and flung his arms up in another dramatic flourish of movement, "We'll take the little'ol Normandy, cut through over ten-thousand Geth ships, ya'know... Because that's easy?" He rolled his eyes dramatically, "Then we can deal with the Collectors, they're easy too, even easier? Hmm, then we'll swoop in, free the Geth and make peace with song and dance!"
