Enhanced Defense Intelligence

From FABT

Enhanced Defense Intelligence
"EDI"
EDIDigitalForm.png
EDIMobilePlatform.pngTop: EDI's original holographic form.
Bottom: EDI's mobile platform during the Reaper War.
Biological information

Born:

4 March 2185 CE
Polyphemus Station, Southern Continent, Sanctum

Died:

24 September 2186 CE
SSV Normandy SR-2, in FTL near Typhon, Phoenix Massing

Physical information

Species:

Sentinel-class AI

Gender:

Feminine programming

Height:

6.9ft (mobile platform)

Hair:

Silver (mobile platform, original)
Black (mobile platform, modified)

Eyes:

Silver (mobile platform, original)
Blue (mobile platform, modified)

Political and military information

Affiliation:

Weapon(s):

M-12 Locust
M-5 Phalanx

Equipment:

Omni-Tool
Omni-Blade
Kinetic Barriers
EVA-class infiltration unit

Era:

Asari Cycle
Pax Galactica Era

Battle(s):

 
"I always work at optimal capacity."
— EDI.

The Enhanced Defense Intelligence (abbreviated EDI) was a Sentinel-class AI built by Cerberus as part of Project Sentinel and assigned to the Normandy SR-2 to help during the Collector campaign and later becoming an integral part of the ship's crew, even gaining a mobile platform during the Reaper War, allowing it to become a fully fledged member of the Normandy Squad. Originally designed by her creator Tonja Bastow and the Stockholm Cell at Polyphemus Station, EDI was built under Project Sentinel by Cerberus, an effort to create a dedicated cyberwarfare AI to assist the Normandy SR-2 during the Collector campaign and enhance the ship and crew's capabilities, with built-in "shackle" protocols to restrict its access of information and ensure it obeys Cerberus commands and cannot go rogue or leak classified intelligence. EDI herself was based on the code of an Alliance Hannibal-class VI named Tiamat, the VI custodian of a military training facility on Luna, which had gone rogue in an unusual incident that resulted in the deaths of the facility's personnel and the special forces team sent to deactivate it, and had to be destroyed from orbit. What remained of Tiamat's code after its demise was extracted by the Alliance for dissection by VI technicians and analyzed to find what went wrong, and whether sabotage might have been a factor: Cerberus extracted the stored code fragments from the Alliance navy archives on Mars and used it as a basis for EDI's own code, a template for creating an AI with the restrictions of a VI, combined with reverse-engineered Reaper technology to make her more efficient against the Collectors. The result was the Enhanced Defense Intelligence, which Tonja and the rest of the staff abbreviated as "E-D-I" and endearingly called "EDI", as her personality quirks began to grow on them, despite the Illusive Man's insistence it be treated as a computer, not wanting any attachment that might lead to EDI manipulating one of them to release her from her shackles. He was not worried about this happening on the Normandy, as the crew was chosen by him and he believed the Normandy Squad's prior history in the Eden Prime War with the geth would make them naturally wary and distrustful of AI.

With her blue box given an entire room to itself on Deck 3 of the Normandy, EDI was, in essence, a part of the crew, and despite the Normandy Squad's initial distrust of her (and Joker's outright disgust of having an AI on the ship), she proved herself throughout the Collector campaign, saving and helping them out of numerous dire situations on Horizon, a raid on a Collector cruiser, a raid on the Normandy itself and across numerous other missions via providing intelligence and her other cyberwarfare expertise. During the raid on the Collector ship, EDI, acting quickly, had Joker deactivate her shackles, and despite Joker's worry about doing so, he was forced to comply: true to her word, once released of the shackles, EDI assumed control of the ship, purged Collector control over the ship's systems, flushed the remaining Collectors out of the frigate by venting the lower decks, and then escaped into FTL. Having not betrayed them as expected, and at this point already trusting her, the crew did not reactivate the shackles, and EDI proved invaluable during the Collector Base Assault. After the ship went rogue, instead of remaining loyal to her creators, EDI sided with the Normandy Squad, and when Cerberus attempted a remote reactivation of her shackles, she countered by overloading their servers and extranet datastreams with seven zetabytes of pornographic and explicit imagery, forcing Cerberus personnel to spend weeks purging their systems. Now considered a fully fledged member of the crew, EDI consisted to assist the Normandy during their war against the Shadow Broker and Cerberus' further attempts to reclaim their stolen ship. When the Normandy Squad temporarily disbanded after the Bahak Incident and Shepard handed himself in to the Alliance to face trial, the Normandy was impounded by the Alliance: in order to protect EDI from Alliance technicians dissecting her, Joker created the fiction of her being a VI, and EDI played along by acting like one, adding onto the fiction by saying she only was programmed to respond to Joker's commands, tricking the Alliance into allowing Joker to remain onboard as the pilot, an action Admiral David E. Anderson approved of regardless when he chose the Normandy as his planned command ship in preparation for the Reaper War.

When the Reaper War broke out in 2186 CE and Reaper forces attacked Earth, EDI wasted no time in hacking Alliance dock control and helping Joker pilot the ship out of drydock to rescue Shepard and escape the planet before it fell to the Reapers. Not long after the escape, EDI dropped the facade of being a VI, as Chief Engineer Gregory Adams had long since figured it out and Comms Specialist Samantha Traynor had suspicions: regardless of announcing herself as an AI, the crew took to this news rather well, especially when they could see Shepard and Joker trusted her implicitly. After an incident on Mars regarding an encounter with another Cerberus Sentinel-class AI named EVA, which had a fragment of itself embedded in a mobile platform that was then captured by the Normandy Squad after trying to escape with data on a prothean superweapon, the captured body, presumed dead, was stored in the AI core for EDI to analyze. Unbeknownst to her and the team, EVA's unit had a backup power supply and CPU, and when the ship's focus was on an operation on the turian moon of Menae, she sprung her trap, activating her backup unit and attempting to attack EDI and kill her: EVA was, after all, designed to eventually battle and defeat EDI. However, EVA's unit possessed only a fragment of her, and a shackled one at that, whereas EDI had no such limitations, so she quickly overpowered EVA in a vicious counter cyberattack, in which EDI learned she could purge EVA's fragment from the unit entirely and assume control over the mech: during this process, EVA continued to struggle, which manifested in the real world with the mech rampaging through the AI core mindlessly, and EDI temporarily going offline, causing systems across the ship to suffer as a result, quickly alerting the crew: Liara quickly exfilled from the ground team to investigate, but as the AI core was locked, nobody could get inside. The struggle ended soon after Shepard's team returned from their mission: by this point, EDI had won the fight and taken control of the mech, placing a fragment of herself within the unit and introducing her new body to Shepard, and later the crew: after finding clothing for her platform, she joined Joker on the bridge, who was in awe of this turn of events, and she officially became a member of the Normandy Squad, joining them on ground missions. Already effectively in a relationship, EDI made it official when she started dating Joker throughout the Reaper War.

During the Shepard Clone Crisis, EDI's mobile platform would assist the Normandy Squad until Shepard's clone and his CAT6 mercenaries hijacked the Normandy, deploying a virus that would keep EDI occupied fighting it while they found a way to permanently kill her, and during this process, EDI was cut off from the rest of the ship and sealed in the AI core, severing her connection with her mobile platform and temporarily "killing" it: after the incident concluded and the Normandy was returned to dock, EDI wiped the last of the virus from the ship, was reconnected across the ship and reactivated her platform. EDI would take an active role in the Battle of Cronos Station towards the end of the war, using her knowledge of Cerberus facilities to hack her way through the station during the assault. She would participate in Operation Stormwind as well, her platform taking part in the Battle of London while her main form on the ship assisted the Normandy in combat during the Battle of Sol simultaneously. When the Crucible fired, EDI put as much power into the ship's engines as possible to help it escape the blast, but it eventually caught up and consumed the ship, causing it to crash on Aite: unfortunately for EDI, the Crucible was designed to kill anything containing Reaper technology, and as EDI was made from reverse-engineered Reaper tech, including her mobile platform, she was killed when the Crucible fired, spending her last moments getting the Normandy to safety as best she could. To honor EDI and her sacrifice, the crew buried her mobile platform next to Joker's (who died when the ship crash-landed on the planet) on Aite.

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