Cipher

Location: unknown

Time: unknown

Status: unconscious

Pain.

That was the first thing that went through her mind, and not a normal pain, a stabbing pain in the head that causes a person to not be able to think clearly. A migraine is not entirely dissimilar from what she felt at that time; however, this pain had neither the sensitivity to light nor the nausea that comes with it.

After a small fraction of a second however, the pain was gone and she decided to take in her surroundings.

She was in a field, a field of some sort of grain. The planet's star was high in the sky signaling the time of day on this planet as most likely being noon or midday. Looking around more she noticed the layout of the field of what looked like wheat: it was well organized, had a very advanced but unrecognizable irrigation system. "This is probably not a society of primitives" she thought to herself. Taking stock of herself, she noticed that she was wearing her uniform, which consisted of a grey shirt with an officer's jacket, grey trousers, and black boots with a visible steel toe on the outside. An unassuming outfit in certain circles to be sure, but for someone of her occupation it would be what would be expected of her to wear. Looking around beyond the edge of the field felt a bit of disappointment as she saw the wooden house, causing her to rethink her earlier assessment of the strange planet she had now found herself on.

"They probably have advanced farming technology but little else" she said out loud, as she also saw a windmill as the power source for the humble home as well as a water tower.

Thinking of home she suddenly remembered that she had no idea where her ship was as well as if she was armed or not. Checking her inventory again quickly revealed that she was indeed armed with her pistol and her scoped rifle. With a slight bit of relief she then checked her data pad to see if she still had her ship and where it was, (she liked to have a tracker on it with a highly encrypted cipher on it to prevent theft) with a huge sigh of relief she found that indeed she did have her ship and that it was nearby. Deciding to go to her ship and find out what planet she was on she got up, But as soon as she put her hands on the ground to get up she heard a loud bang and a scream from what sounded like a young woman not quite fully matured.

"Oh, not again!" she said loudly. Not that she knew exactly what was going on, but she was not one to hear a scream from a child or youth and not do something about it. Getting up quickly and heading towards the sound and hearing another bang, which happened to come from the "probably primitive" house that she saw, she checked her rifle to see if she had enough ammo to stop whatever mischief that these housebreakers wanted to do.

Arriving at the house, she noticed with horror that there was a corpse of a young mature human woman of no more than thirty with really red hair that lay in a pool of blood on the floor of the porch. Seeing this and thinking something terrible happened she hurried into the building to see that there was a human man bleeding from the temple standing in front of a young girl of about fifteen who looked so much like the man, aside from the red hair of the dead woman outside, that she had to be his daughter. The young woman was holding her wounded unconscious little brother of about six years old was bleeding from the arm from what appeared to be a puncture wound that could have been from a rather low tech slug thrower or a stab wound. The man was well onto his thirties but could not have been over thirty-eight, had no facial hair, had a short military cut head of dark brown almost black hair had plain blue jeans but was wearing a grey t-shirt with a strange shaped N7 right below his right collarbone and was holding a strange pistol at the housebreakers.

Seeing the three housebreakers she was stunned by quite a few things things. First was that she knew what they were and why they looked how they did, but that paled in comparison with the fact that she did not know how she knew: they were batarians, a race of beings from a planet known as Khar'shan that had a caste system and had a penchant for enslaving innocent people from other races; and they looked like they were employing their despicable trade. Seeing the situation for what it was and knowing exactly what to do she pulled the riffle up and opened fire on the unsuspecting slaver sum that they were and killed all three of them in less than two seconds flat with three shots from her rifle directly in the cerebellum, if the batarian cerebellum was in the same place that most humanoids had them.

"Thank you miss, my entire family and I would be dead if you were here just a few seconds later, I did not know that there were any asari commandos here." Confused, she was just about to ask why he called her an asari commando as she had only an inkling of what that was when his eyes rolled into the back of his head as he lost consciousness.

"Papa!" the little girl screamed. As she set her brother down none too gently and rushed to her father's side.

"Stand back girl" the deadly woman commanded, and immediately as if the girl had been trained to the girl stepped back to allow her family's mysterious savior to approach her father.

She had to work fast she knew it, but she was hesitant to use what medical supplies she had as she did not know if there were more batarians between her and her ship; however, one look on the pleading face of the sixteen year old girl and she knew she would use however much she needed to save this poor girl's father as she had already lost her mother.

So after applying the medical patch to the man's head she turned back you the young girl and told her that her father would live and asked her "do you have a safe place to move him?"

Nodding the girl told the blue woman "yes, we have a safe room in the basement for emergencies."

"Take me to it and I will ensure that you are safe."

After she said this the girl picked up her unconscious brother and led the blue woman down to the basement to the safe room which was sealed off by a pair of sliding metal doors that did not look anything like the rest of the house.

"Huh," the woman thought to herself "I guess these people are not so primitive after all."

The doors were made of a steel coloured metal similar to a starship's hull and had a yellow holographic lock in the center.

Pulling out her Omni-tool ("how do I know that" the woman thought) the girl typed something, the lock turned green, and the door slid open to reveal a well provisioned room with food, three beds, about a half dozen more of strange weapons like the one the man had, and a spare pair of Omni-tools.

"This is quite a place" the woman said to the girl, "what is your name?"

"Anna, Anna Louise Shepard"

At those words, the woman started, for she finally understood how she knew the things that she did. She knew where she was, she knew what year it was, she knew who the young girl was, how old she was, and she knew what she herself just did.

Facing the girl and knowing she could not be found by the alliance marines that were sure to come and investigate she told the girl while bandaging the boy's arm "I need to be gone when the alliance gets here but I want to make sure you and your family are safe. Here is what I am going to do: I am going to lock the door when I leave and encrypt it so the batarians cannot get to you and your family"

"Why do you need to go? Are you in some sort of trouble?" the girl inquired with a little fear in her voice.

"No, I am in no trouble with the alliance, but there are certain people in the alliance that would get me in trouble."

At this the girl frowned.

"Here" the woman reassured the young lady standing up and handing something to her, "here is something that you may find useful someday, don't tell anyone you have it or when I come to retrieve it someone might have stolen it."

"Why should I do this for you? My parents always told me not to trust strangers."

Smiling, the woman said to the girl in a sarcastic tone "oh, only because I saved you, your father, and your brother." In a more soft tone continued, "But to give you some assurance I will tell you my call sign." And leaning down into the girl's ear she whispered her occupational call sign to her, widening her eyes she turned to give the strange blue woman a death glare but was surprised to find her gone and the door closing.

After the door closed the blue woman took out her data pad and started encrypting the door with the strongest encryption she could.

Having secured the young woman's safety, the blue woman headed upstairs, picked up one of the dead batarians' shotguns and taking all three of their Omni-tools she proceeded to head out to her ship.

-Line-

The trip was uneventful as she expected, even though she did dispatch any batarians in groups of three or less with her appropriated batarian shotgun and blades she always had on her. This task was easy because of her skill with stealth and experience in close quarters combat.

Reaching her ship, she was glad to see that no one else had found her it; and lowering the ramp she walked up it and into her ship. Turning right out of the doorway passing her paranoid mechanical butler she headed though the communications room though a hallway passing the sleeping area she arrived at the cockpit. Sitting down in the pilot's chair she wondered where her little copilot was as she activated the ship thrusters and cloak and headed towards space.

Once she achieved geosynchronous orbit she stood up, looked out the window, and saw that the batarian ships were leaving as the alliance ship dropped out of FTL.

"This is certainly a nice mess I've gotten into" she said not expecting to get a reply

Hearing a whistle she smiled and turned to "her little copilot" and said "no G9 I do not think the ascendancy has ships like that" frowning and looking down in a low depressed tone tone she said "I don't think there is anyone I know that has those kinds of ships"

G9 whistled again.

"No, I will be fine I'm just a little depressed"

Another whistle, a low drawn out whistle

"I think we are far from home G9 with no way back; however, we may not be home but at least we still have a purpose"

G9 whistles again more cheerfully this time.

The blue woman smiled "oh, you know, the usual: the security and safety of the galaxy"

A series of beeps and whistles later and the blue military woman replied while showing a smile of genuine happiness despite her current situation "yes, it will be fun: stealth, secrets, and technology that will make the galaxy a much more interesting place." Sighing with slight sadness but mostly anticipation she pulled out her dog tags and looked at the thing she got when she graduated from the academy with high marks in close combat, stealth, ship science, communications science and other areas of non-military technology.

Commander Vras'Mirsa'Inrokini

Serial number 121-919-90

Chiss Ascendancy starship engineer

Blood type A+

Location: Midoir orbit

Time: 1537 hours

Status: Alive and uninjured