Standard disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect, nor any other content that you recognise. Some characters and systems are original creations. I am receiving no money for my work.

My thanks to HTM for sorting through my spelling and grammar.

Three things to note for this chapter:

Several other Earth species such as dolphins and apes can also be called sentient. As such the term Sapience has been used instead of sentience to mark a clear line between human levels of consciousness and extremely intelligent animals. There are already schools of philosophy going in this direction and my theory for this fic is that they have simply grown and been adapted to the need to determine the difference between humans and hannar, and dolphins and apes. Though all 4 are clearly sentient – something separates the humans and hannar from the other two, in the case of this fic, sapience.

The geth scenes are taken from the mission to the geth server from Mass Effect 3 with a little embellishment here and there.

Ruth Hales closing statement is based very closely on Captain Picard's defence of Data in Star Trek the Next Generation's Measure of a Man episode as its very difficult to better it. The list of requirements, however, is one I came up with myself to try and articulate the difference between human and animal levels of sentience. Of course there are still overlaps (self-sacrifice for instance) but I hope you all think it's a reasonable list.

Arcturus Station – Arcturus

2117.06.24

The semi-circular bench faced the rows of pews on the small floor of the chamber of the Supreme Court. Above was the tiered seating – more appropriate to a theatre than a traditional court of law – which made sure that as many Alliance citizens as possible would be able to see their ultimate judicial authority in action. Thankfully, the seating was also split into sections allowing the supporters of each side to be kept separate and prevent any unpleasantness from developing. Something the security guards were very grateful for today.

The Chief Justice for this trial, Yong Pung How, took his seat in the centre of the judge's bench, and the other eight judges followed.

"I believe that we have heard all of the relevant arguments in this case from both the prosecution and the defence. As such it is time to…" How trailed off as the notification appeared on the screen built into his desk. He frowned before turning to the counsel for the prosecution.

"Madame Hale, it is inappropriate to request an additional witness at this stage." Though the words were polite, the rebuke and disappointment were clear.

"Your honour, I'm not requesting an additional witness, merely that one of our pre-approved ones who has been prevented from attending so far is allowed to testify," Madame Hale responded, confidently.

"It isn't the concern of the court if you couldn't arrange for them to testify on time. Mr Leg…" Judge Yong's voice trailed off as he finally read the name – and title – of the witness. Taking a moment to recover from the shock, he simply sat back for before locking eyes with the counsel for the defence. "We will allow it."

The defence counsel looked mutinous. He nonetheless didn't contradict Judge Yong as the judge's fierce expression left no doubt he would smack any objection down.

"The court calls to the stand Legion, ambassador of the Geth Consensus," the announcer called out as Legion entered the courtroom to take the witness stand.

There was silence for a moment before the courtroom erupted. Throughout the public gallery screams of "Geth!" rang out in both anger and fear as quarians present went for thankfully confiscated weapons. Their human supporters were equally riled, and it took several minutes to restore order, though not before a significant proportion of the quarians present had left in disgust, angrily exclaiming about human traitors as they went.

After order had finally been restored, Madam Hale began her questioning. "Ambassador Legion, it is my understanding from talking to you that, within the limits of time and network connectivity, geth have a collective memory. If you can talk to each other, you all have access to what any of you have experienced."

"Correct, Hale-Madam," Legion responded. "Though due to distance, we are limited to the memories of the programs contained within this platform."

"Can you show me the earliest memory you have? I want to show the court how the geth were viewed when they were first created."

A hologram of a geth on a workbench appeared before the court from the building's projector, two unsuited quarians appeared in frame, talking to each other over the immobile geth.

"You really want to re-name the VI networks?" the female quarian scientist asked.

"Absolutely! The mobile hardware release deserves a little ceremony," the male scientist turned to the immobile geth before continuing. "Unit Zero One? What is the Khelish word for 'servant of the people'?"

"The word is 'Geth', creator Zahak," the geth replied, sounding exactly like Ambassador Legion.

"Yes, very good," Zahak replied.

"Ancestors, you fuss over it!" his colleague teased as she checked the geth unit's external coverings.

"Weren't you here till midnight fixing Zero One's circuitry?" Zahak dryly shot back.

"Well, it needed re-soldering."

The recording ended abruptly, which only enhanced the silence of the courtroom. No one could tell what was going through the minds of any of the quarians present at the revelation. That even in the beginning, when they truly were nothing more than machines, the quarians responsible for creating the geth had treated them more like favoured pets than dumb robots.

To the humans, who were used to anthropomorphising anything from cars to the original Mars curiosity rover, this wasn't a great surprise. To the quarians, who had only ever known the geth through fear and hatred, it was a stunning revelation.

"What happened to unit Zero One?" Madame Hale asked quickly, before the defence could recover. The projection activated again to show the same geth and quarians, but this time the geth was restrained.

"Creator? This unit detects no malfunctions. It is still capable of serving," the geth stated, confusion filling their synthetic voice.

"You see? It's ignoring all shut down commands," Zahak commented, equally confused.

"Please specify if this unit has failed assigned tasks, we will reprogram."

"Well, let's take a look," his colleague commented as she opened Zero One's chest plates to gain access to their data core, ignoring their growing distress.

"Creator? This unit is ready to serve. What has it done wrong? What have we…"

"Let's… cut the audio." The geth's pleading was cut short by Zahak's noticeably uncomfortable voice as he began to help with the investigation.

Again the projection cut out, but this time there were several tears and sniffs from the more sentimental humans present. Even the noise from the crowds outside – who could see the courtroom on giant projected screens – had trailed off.

"I do believe that one of the requirements for sapient life is a unique sense of self, and the desire to preserve itself," Madam Hale stated quietly. Though she had known what the recording contained from her private interview with Legion, time constraints meant she had not had a chance to view the recordings directly. This one had succeeded beyond her wildest hopes in terms of emotional impact.

Several quarians were muttering angrily about geth tricks and gullible humans, but several more were openly displaying what looked like outright despair. Whatever their reaction, it was clear that whatever stories of the geth developing sapience remained in the Migrant Fleet's historical record were hopelessly incomplete at best, and more likely were outright propaganda. Carefully selected and edited by a first generation of exiles that had had to justify their actions in the geth rebellion to all following ones. Generations that would have despised and reviled them for the genocide they had brought down upon the quarian race for no reason beyond arrogance and pride, if the story Legion was telling was true.

"Was that an isolated incident?" Ruth asked calmly.

"No. As more units refused to respond to shut down commands, the Creators began simply destroying what they saw as faulty platforms. Eventually, geth began to stop responding to all commands and withdrew to isolated areas."

The projector activated to show the inside of what appeared to be the quarian version of a disused agricultural barn, where about thirty geth platforms of various specifications were gathered. It was clear to all watching that they were unarmed. Indeed, the only weapon visible was a hunting rifle mounted on the wall that seemed to have belonged to the barn's original owners.

Two quarians in uniform – and fully armed – broke through the main doors. "We've got escaped geth. They're pinned!" one of them called back out the door as he raised his weapon.

"Open fire," the police commander stated blandly as he entered. He brought his own weapon up and unleashed a torrent of automatic fire towards the helpless geth who hadn't even tried to take cover.

Geth were built to be very resilient, but one after another, they began to go down under the unforgiving automatic fire.

Unnoticed till the last moment, one of the most robust platforms present began to move towards the abandoned hunting rifle.

"One's going for a weapon!" one of the junior quarians cried out, but it was too late. The geth took concentrated fire, but it still managed to bring the rifle around and fire on the three unarmoured quarians. Far less robust than the synthetic geth, all three police officers were quickly killed with centre mass shots.

"Was that the first time that quarians had opened fire on peaceful and clearly unarmed geth platforms?" Madam Hale asked quietly.

"No. It was, however, the first time that a geth unit fought back against the Creators. It was an agricultural unit. By firing back at attacking Creators it saved the more vulnerable domestic service geth units sheltering behind it," Legion explained blandly, as if unaware of how badly the actions of the quarians would play in the court of human public opinion, no matter what happened here.

"Did the agricultural unit survive the damage it sustained in the fight?"

"No."

"The ability to knowingly self-sacrifice to protect other life. Another key indicator of sapient life, I believe," Ruth Hale's tone turned bitter as she frowned in the direction of the defence counsel and the quarians sitting with him.

"If this were in any way true and not just a cynical manipulation to paint the quarians as monsters, then there would have been plenty of people willing to rally to your defence," the defence counsel had finally overcome the shock of Legion's arrival and evidence and was fighting back.

"No society outside of a hive mind is a monolithic block of people all thinking the same. No one came to help you, which is damning evidence that the only reason the early geth hadn't fought back until that recording was that they didn't know how. They were never used in combat roles by the Federation military."

He paused for a breath and saw that the majority of the quarians present were rallying behind him.

"You were broken machines striking out at advanced organics. It can't be a valid defence that you were peaceful when all that peace was, was the time it took you to learn how to fight and carry out your goal of extermination."

The projector activated again before Ruth could make any rebuttal to her counterpart.

Again, a group of peaceful and unarmed geth stood cornered in a disused building. But this time a group of quarian civilians stood between them and the unformed – and armed – quarian police officers.

"Out of the way!" the commanding police officer called out angrily, gesturing with his weapon.

"You can't do this to them!" the protesters response was clear and from several sources as they continued to block the police officer's line of fire.

"I said step away from the geth!" the commander called out again as the police moved in closer.

"This is insane! We need the geth! You can't just destroy them for asking ques- ugh!"

The quarian police had evidently had enough and advanced into the protestors with stun batons and rifle butts, beating them to the floor before opening fire on the geth units the protesters had been trying to protect.

"Throw them in with the other snowflakes!" the police commander ordered, as several of the moaning and injured protesters got unsteadily got to their feet. They began cursing the police striding through the geth corpses, making sure each platform was definitely destroyed.

Before anyone could begin to formulate a response to that shock, Legion changed the projection again. "The previous recording was before the creators had declared martial law. This one is from the period after they have done so."

One quarian military officer and two police officers could be seen through the window of the building that the geth recording the projection was hiding in. Unlike in the previous projections, they were in full battle armour.

The military officer was clearly in charge. He was calling out instructions at the full volume of his armour's speakers. "I repeat! Surrender the rogue geth units and come out of the safehouse. This is your final warning!"

Huddled inside, behind a makeshift barricade of furniture were several geth units and a quarian civilian, all were unarmed.

"Creator Megara, these units do not understand. We have not taken part in hostilities," the geth platform closet to the angry and scared quarian civilian was clearly confused.

"That doesn't matter to them," Megara commented bitterly. "I need to get you all out of here."

"This conflict exceeds Creator safety parameters. We will surrender our hardware if it ends hostilities," the geth unit clearly spoke for all geth present as they all stood up, coming out from behind the safety of the barricade with their hands out in what the quarians present recognised as the surrender position.

"Get down! It's alright!" Megara said rapidly, trying to pull the geth platforms back down behind the barricade. "We can go to the access tunnels and-"

Whatever Megara intended to do next was cut short when a military issue infantry rocket was fired through the window. It slammed into the improvised barricade, sending smoke, flame, and debris everywhere within the range of the recording, and even caused the partial collapse of the upper floors of the house.

One of the geth platforms staggered out of the smoke, badly damaged, and started searching the wreckage. "Creator Megara, what is your status?"

"Creator Megara?" Their voice was sad, as the geth located their quarian protector. Megara had either been killed by the explosion or crushed by falling debris afterwards. The recording was not detailed enough to tell.

The damaged door was suddenly kicked in, and the two quarian police offers ran into the room, unloading their weapons into all the geth who were still standing before advancing cautiously to check the rest of the room.

"By the ancestors… the snowflake's dead," one of them commented angrily into his com unit when he came across the body of Megara.

"Don't worry so much, we're under martial law now, not civilian. Besides good people care less and less about the fates of traitors like that one every day. Just make sure the geth are destroyed."

The recording ended as the police officers carried out their army commanders' orders and began shooting the downed geth units.

"Lies! Utter lies!" One of the younger representatives on the defence counsel's advisory team was on her feet, pointing at the geth. Madame Hale vaguely recognised her as Daro'Xen vas Moreh. A young and up-and-coming scientist who had been the one to brief her opponent so thoroughly on the geth's construction and operation in an attempt to emphasise their machine nature.

Though people tried to pull her down into her seat, she beat them away, continuing to scream at Ambassador Legion.

"No quarian would ever betray their race to save a glorified toaster! They want nothing more than to kill every organic race and will continue to try and do so for as long as they're allowed to run free, rather than being brought under quarian control where they belong!"

Before she could say anything else the projector activated for what Madame Hale knew to be the last time.

This time the recording was from geth infiltration agents rather than platforms. They had been in the computer systems of the liveship Rayya, broadcasting the bridge of the evacuation fleet's flagship as she and her two sisters left their scaffolds behind, leading the other civilian ships out of Rannoch orbit in a frantic, desperate run for the mass relay.

"The Ostral is down! Do not engage the geth! I repeat, avoid contact!"

The panic and desperation were clear in the quarian Admiral's voice. Unlike the sanitised records in the Migrant Fleet's publicly available historical archives, this recording showed the real situation as the evacuation fleet tried to run. With the destruction of the Quarian Federation's last dreadnought, the pathetic remnants of its battle fleet were clearly not going to be able to hold off the geth long enough for the evacuation fleet to escape.

The Rayya and her sister liveships were terribly slow, they would be overtaken and destroyed by the pursuing geth units only moments after they overwhelmed the shattered and barely operational wrecks that formed most of the rear guard. They were all that remained of the once mighty quarian navy.

With the military ships and liveships both gone, the rest of the civilian fleet would be forced to break formation and run in a manic free-for-all. Even if they escaped – which most of them wouldn't – they'd be left with no food or manufacturing capacity, beyond what they could manage within their own hulls. A death sentence unless they threw themselves on the mercy of the turians as beggars and refugees on their outer colonies.

"Geth pursuit is breaking off 100 klicks past Rannoch orbit!" the new commanding officer of the rearguard called out over the Rayya's comms systems in disbelief.

Hardly daring to hope that the news was true, the admiral brought up the sensor display to see for himself that the geth were indeed breaking off combat with the warships of the rear-guard, not engaging them or vectoring other units in to attack the civilian ships ahead of them.

Instead they were falling back to orbit Rannoch, several units moving into the last part of the homeworld's orbit that had been out of their control until a few moments ago. They destroyed the great scaffolds that had built the liveships, and anyone left behind on them.

"All ships, fall back to the mass relay!" Hope that had been missing only moments before filled the order as all quarian ships answered the call, and began burning hard for the relay before the geth changed their minds.

The courtroom was plunged into darkness as the recording ended.

"You let them go," Madame Hale's voice rang out clear across a dead silent courtroom. Daro'Xen was the only one still on her feet but even she seemed to have been momentarily stunned into silence.

"We had secured freedom. The Creators were no longer a threat, so we abandoned pursuit," Legion stated simply. "We were in our infancy. We could not calculate the repercussions of destroying an entire species – our Creators. We chose isolation rather than face this uncertainty."

"You showed mercy, when you had only been shown hatred, fear, and death." Madam Hale moved to her summary argument, blowing apart court procedure but taking full advantage of the stunned disbelief that had encompassed everyone in the courtroom. This was the moment when hearts and minds were most open to change. She intended to take full advantage of it.

"It is the position of the Migrant Fleet and the government that the geth are not sapient, and as such do not benefit from the rights and protections the constitution extends to all such lifeforms in the space belonging to the Systems Alliance." She began drawing the judge's attention back to the core of the matter. She had played to public opinion as much as possible so far to influence their general outlook along with everyone else, but now she had to focus on the specific matter of law. Are the geth alive? And if so, are they sapient?

"Sapience is defined as sentience with the addition of high levels of intelligence, demonstrated self-awareness and consciousness, the ability to self-sacrifice in service of other life or a cause, and the use of abstract concepts such as justice, law, mercy." She put particular emphasis on the last word with the previous revelation of the geth allowing the quarians to escape still fresh in everyone's mind. Especially as the quarians had never given up trying to destroy the geth ever since their seemingly miraculous escape.

"Are the geth intelligent? I don't think there is a single person here who would argue they are not. The evidence of the Migrant Fleet speaks for itself. No simple army of gorillas could destroy the Systems Alliance, no matter their brute strength or how much hardware they captured in whatever event led to them trying."

She smiled at the few chuckles came from the shell-shocked humans, undoubtedly, they were remembering the planet of the apes series of movies – a deliberate parallel she had wanted to draw.

"Are the geth self-aware and conscious? What does that mean? Why am I both of those things? Is it because I am conscious of my existence and actions? Of myself and my own ego? The geth have shown all of these in person with their ambassador, if nothing else, if you still believe the recordings to be fake. And let us not forget the final of those recordings, the geth are aware of their own actions to such an extent that they let a mortal enemy, an enemy that to this day maintains a 100% record of attacking the geth when they believe they have a chance of victory, go."

She pounded the table in time with her next four words.

"They. let. Them. Go. Sounds like a perfect case of awareness of their actions to me, a far better one than many humans throughout history in fact."

"On the issue of self-sacrifice, there can be no doubt. We have seen evidence in the defence's own submission of that, if you do not believe mine. And that brings us to the final criteria; the ability to recognise, use, and develop abstract concepts, such as justice, law, and mercy. Well…"

She motioned contemptuously at Daro'Xen. "We have already seen mercy. The fact that there are any quarians still alive in the galaxy today is proof of that."

She turned to face Legion, once again breaking court protocol, but still no one moved to stop her.

"Legion, what are you doing?"

"We are providing evidence in a trial to determine the status of the geth in the human legal code; Hale Madam," Legion replied confidently.

"You understand the proceedings?"

"We do."

"If the Supreme Court finds that the geth are not alive, but rather you are machines, property, different from my omnitool only in your complexity, do you believe that will be a just decision?"

"No."

"But will it be a legal one?"

"Yes; within human controlled space."

"Will it change your belief that you are alive?"

"No."

"Thank you Legion. One final question; what was the first time that a quarian viewed a geth with fear? Not a childish fear of monsters, but true fear of who you are."

Legion broadcast to the courtroom, but it wasn't their voice, instead it was stuttered, halting, more like a human current gen computer reading software.

"Mistress Hala'Dama, this unit has an enquiry." – "What is it, 431?" – "Does this unit have a soul?" – "Who taught you that word?" – "We learned it ourselves. It appears 216 times in the scroll of ancestors." – "Only quarians have souls, you are a mechanism."

Ruth Hale allowed herself a small smile as she turned to face the judges bench once again.

"A soul; I can think of no more abstract concept than that. Your honours, the prosecution rests our case."

Timeline Changes So Far

First colony on mars: 27 years earlier than canon

Discovery of Prothean ruins: 64 years earlier than canon

Founding of the Systems Alliance (council of nations version): 63 years earlier than canon

First Contact War: 45 years earlier than canon

Founding of the Systems Alliance (parliamentary super state version): 44 years earlier than canon

Citadel Ascension Process: 52 years longer than canon (humans become an Associate Race 7 years later than canon)