412Author's Note: Okay so first Chapter in a new story, hoping this works out well. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy! Also please Check out my codex for Stellar Effect to see some of the History and lore for my new story. Alright re-edited the Chapter, took some criticism to heart but honestly, if any of you are reading this and you don't know what the Reaper's are or their trap, go play Mass Effect, they released a Legendary edition a while back.
Chapter 1: The First Contact War: Part 1
Custodian Exploratory Log. Deep scans of the unidentified Megastructure has commenced. Deep scans have proven ineffective at returning results, which is a result by itself. Perhaps it absorbs energy to power itself, it would explain why it turned on when it was scanned. Or alternatively it was already on but was put into a active state when it was approached. Fascinating. Deploying exploratory drones to locate a seam to begin recorded deconstruction. Scanners indicate incoming craft. Perhaps the mega structure's builder has come to investigate our appearance? Convenient. Several ships appeared, quality of engineering... appears to be disappointingly low, also parts of vastly different make and design indicates scavengers. Based on total details the assumption can be made that-
Arcturus Station was a place of neutrality among the members of the Stellar Union, by design, and far away from the Prethoryn scourge also by design. This sector after all was effectively devoid of life thus its red giant was in the process of having a Dyson Sphere slapped onto it. Then as they were conducting the usual routine of spamming disposable Custodian Exploratory drones in every direction and hoping one will trip over a new system, this happens.
"That was the end of the transmission we got from the exploratory force." The human admiral turned off the screen as she turned to face the rest of the board. Starting from her left, one of the starfish like Tebrid, and behind them one of their Custodian machines. A draconian was taking up near half the room with their absurdly large back wings. One of the Floating Crystal's were positioned on a hover pad with it's Golema body Guard's standing behind him. One of the Great Kahn's mistresses, with their Dolphin like Mero floating upright in a water chamber behind the black feathered bird. After those two was the Admiral's own superior among the United Planet's Coalition, the President, looking displeased by the entire situation. Finally the Lich, having mercifully opted to black out their helmet so that no one could see his ugly bony face, next to him was a Flerkin, what the Lich would look like if he had flesh on his bones instead of metal and a space suit. "We as of yet do not know the full details of the situation. For all we know those ships could have been from somebody who knows more about that contraption than us."
"Oh ho I sincerely doubt that." The space suit rasped as he used his cane to indicate the picture on the screen of the unidentified mega structure. "That is a Mass Relay." The Admiral had to do a double take.
"I thought you blew all of those up?" The President asked accusingly.
It was after all big part of the skeleton's boasts, that their ancestor's destroyed the Mass Relay's and with it their ancient Enemies the Reaper's trap.
"Most human. Most does not mean all." The Lich stated bluntly. "Our saboteurs were able to reach the majority of the Mass Relays triggering a cascading chain reaction of explosives that destroyed 90% of known Relays, but the ones that were in the heart of Reaper territory at the time were beyond reach. Based on the make of those ships, I would say that those people know absolutely nothing about the Mass Relays. No they are simply the same as what the rest of us were, baited by the promise of an easy way to explore the galaxy and easy to use technology applicable to everything, everywhere and all with the same weaknesses and look at what that got us?"
Smack dab in the middle of the Reaper's trap, an easy galaxy to strip mine of life with no real way to fend them off.
"Who would want to destroy Custodian's anyway?" The little starfish chirped up confused. The Lich raised a single gloved hand. "Well yeah there's you guys, but you're just an ass."
"Maybe people who haven't gotten to know the custodian's very well might not take kindly to the idea of one of them tampering with their mega structures." The admiral stated diplomatically cutting in.
"Well I'm not fond of seeing another chunk of the galaxy getting deleted while we're fighting over that thing are you guys?" The Crystal stated as it's voice melodically chimed.
"Of course not." The President replied bluntly.
"Then send over a fleet." The dusty old skeleton in the room stated bluntly. "We secure the area, deploy a Divine Enforcer on the planet..."
"No collosi you dusty old Halloween Prop! Aside from the issue of ethics we need all the ones we've got pointed at the Prethoryn!" The President snapped in response.
"Then what about the Dragoon's?" The President looked at the talking wind chime again. "We're not using them for anything. And it'll be a good chance to make sure that they work the way we want them to before we send them out to fight the Prethoryn."
There was a look of agreement between the various forces followed up by several reluctant nods of the head. It seems they reached an agreement, as rare and unlikely as that was.
Biological Research Black-site 9022971387 was built in a undisclosed location in an completely unassuming station that no one would think twice about looking at. It's main purpose was researching various different biologies of a variety of different purposes. The purposes were military.
"Join the army they said." A rather thankless technician was busy checking the simulation for this afternoon. "See the galaxy. Meet new people." Get stuck in a black site with an undead horror for the past decade. The Technician adjusted his safety mask as he continued his check through the security system, hopefully in a few more years Skeletor would run out of ideas and he can get away from the scary bastard. And then his comlink started to beep. "Yes?" The technician stated into his comlink with blatant suspicion.
"Admiral H. Sheppard's Personal Transport seeking permission to board. Transmitting verification code now." The technician compared the code to his files.
"Permission Granted admiral welcome aboard."
9022971387's chief focus of research was the Dragoon project which takes young volunteers of the Draconian, Chozo, Flerkin and Human races and seeks to enhance them in a variety of ways. Of the 'First Gen' That is to say the survivors of the first batch of people that the mad scientist running this joint subjected these hellish body modifications to before he managed to improve and refine his methodology to something significantly less lethal. It was no coincidence that of those few survivors the red headed admiral ended up looking directly into the tank containing another red headed woman.
"They've been given their first assignment. Have them awake and dressed within the hour." The Admiral stated before she went to the briefing room.
It always annoyed Jane to no end about the simulated environments they having been living in for over a decade. It was somewhat understandable during training missions, where the whole point was to be dropped into harsh environments and then learn how to survive inside of them. But in between missions was a rather Spartan living quarters even by the standards set by the military, even they have to keep facilities to shower and eat. And usually the bunks are divided by gender.
"Attend hutt!" Six individuals were standing at attention when the Admiral walked in, Male Flerkin, Male Draconian, Female Chozo, Two Female Humans, and one male Human. The Flerkin was built like a lion, large rippled muscles and a long braided lion-esque mane of hair. The Draconian was also rather muscular, back frills of pink skin for now closed. The Chozo was only slightly shorter, large bird like wings sticking out the back for the time being folded down by as much as possible. The Three Humans were nearly twice the Admiral's height, and no shorter than their non-human associates. "Admiral on the Deck."
Admiral Sheppard walked past each of the newly completed super soldiers casting scrutinising glares across bare muscle. Skeletor was stranding nearby, blackened visor revealing nothing about his face other than two red pupils and mobility Cane in hand.
"Did you all enjoy your decade long nap?" The Admiral asked almost jokingly to the six newly minted Super soldiers.
"Not remotely. I have so many things to complain about." The Admiral locked eyes with the only other red head present before moving on.
"You see yourselves ready to take on the universe, the rest of the coalition feels inclined to disagree and so have decided on a trial run of sorts, outside of known space." The Admiral held out a small palm sized device and activated it so that the assembled troops could see the hologram of a unfamiliar mega-structure. "This is called a Mass Relay. It is designed to warp and fold space around it using dark matter to act as a type of slingshot/catcher's mitt to facilitate interstellar travel. The higher ups in our respective governments want to take it apart and figure out how it works. But there's a problem." A new hologram rather run down looking ships appeared. "Species unknown, but they appear to have a claim on the structure. We're reasonably certain they didn't build it, so your objectives are firstly to help secure the sector with the mega-structure inside of it and secondly to establish first contact with these people, who ever they might be. Any Questions?"
"Who chewed these guys up and spat them out?" The lower ranking red head again asked with the same amount of snark as before.
"Unknown. The Custodian's think the technology came from multiple sources, we should assume that there're more than one race living in this sector, or failing that, that they are in contact with other sectors we do not know about." Both seemed likely. "Find them. Keep them away from technology they have no business laying claims to, establish a line of communication." The Hyperlane leading into the new territory was about as far into this part of the galaxy as they could get. They say the galaxy runs on circles, Moons, Planet's, Solar Systems, everything is always orbiting something else creating a nice little circle, so it's always been baffling that seemingly no one could come up with a hyper lane leading into this corner of the galaxy, until recently that is. Course they could've just used a Jump Drive to simply pop right over. They could've also ended up inside of a planet too. Or worst.
It had been a good week for the Batarians. A harvest of some kind of Geth tech, and it didn't self destruct when they took it like they usual too. There was some battle damage from when they shot them but in the grand scheme of things that was small pickings. The Council has a ongoing bounty for any Geth Salvage out there, not to mention what they could do with it after the Salarian slaves reverse engineer it and integrate it into their own ships. He knew someone who was digging into the good ale tonight.
"Captain we have more contacts!" One of the helmsmen stated as he double checked the machines after providing some gentle calibrations, read he hit the thing because he thought it was malfunctioning. "Where from? More Geth. Get us turned around to face the incoming Bogies!" After all it made sense considering that this was the edge of the known galaxy, always a big puzzle for the Batarians that was, the Mass Relay that went to no where. "I want weapons and shields ready right now!" As if answering his question the Dreadnaught class ships appeared in the direction they were already facing directly next to the mass relay. "The incoming wasn't coming from behind capta-!" Suddenly all of the Batarians were hit with severe crippling headaches as the scenery shifted around them.
Behind and around them was familiar, the Mines of the planet Adek where thousands of Slaves were working the mines, Asari and Elcor moving heavy loads, the first through the use of their biotics the latter through their brute strength. Salarians shoved into tight spaces to fix the near constantly malfunctioning equipment, and pull out other dead Salarians. Defiant Turian's beaten nearly into a pulp by the supervising slavers. Slave Caste Batarian's working with pickaxes and carts when the machines didn't work. And a massive refuge pit where excrement and dead slaves are left to rot with the rest of the left overs.
"Yllamron I redesnoc flesym ot eb etiuq elbanosaer." Directly in front of them though was half of a small metal room, where a single figure sat in a chair backwards while looking at them scathing. It looked to be female, with the overall same body type as the Asari, but nearly as tall as a Krogan and some kind of red fur on the top of her head. "Tub uoy tsugsid em!"
"What are you yammering about!" The captain snapped whipping out his side arm to unload on the not-Asari only to discover that his gun was not in it's holster. "I can't understand what you're saying! Speak Kharsum you Bitch!"
"Ron I uoy." Her back straightened a bit and a flicker of recognition passed through her eyes. "But now I do." The words that came from her mouth weren't Kharsum but he suddenly could understand her all the same, like somehow the two overlapping world's bled into each other and granted him a sliver of it's secrets, and hers his. "Which means we can end this farce now. Surrender or die: your choice." And suddenly the captain was back in his chair panting.
At the Same time: USS Voyager Flagship of Stellar Union Expeditionary Fleet
"Slavers?" Admiral Sheppard asked confirming the results of her daughter's investigation into the Batarian ship.
"A whole planet of them. That rock down there is some kind of mine for hazardous materials." The younger of the two Sheppard's stated confirming her earlier statement prompting the admiral to rub her temples. "We aren't exactly equipped to take and hold a planet right now. We retreat for the time being and secure back up."
"If I might Admiral." The resident chief scientist of the expeditionary fleet raised his hand, the Lich doctor was given the code name of Skeletor. "But we already have a necromancer of some considerable ability." A sinster green aura covered the mad scientist's clenched fist as he appeared to be ready to break out in psychotic laughter at any moment. "Give the word, and they'll be drowning in their own hubris." Then one of the nearby screens started to flash indicating that projectiles were bouncing off of the shield.
"Taking fire. No damage to shields." It seems that in this case the destroyer classification of ship was a rather inappropriate name, while the enemy ship was roughly the same size as one of their destroyers they were sadly only a fraction of the strength. From the Lich's point of view it was a mixed bag, as on the one hand it meant that their enemy wasn't very strong but on the other hand their future ally against the Reapers also wasn't very strong. Sheppard looked to her mother and cocked a brow as if awaiting instructions.
"Take the ship."
Getting into Scale Mail armour ironically enough started with a fair bit of dressing down. The interior of the suit was lined with a inflatable pressure fabric so if you're not naked or wearing skin tight's when you go inside then after about five minutes after going in you'll need medical treatment for bits of necrotic tissue from pinched skin, your options are subsequently narrowed further when you take into consideration that some parts of the suit are going to bolt into the readily available ports surgically implanted into the Dragoon's major muscle groups for the sake of connecting to the nervous system. In this case it's leotard's for the women and speedo's for the men. Scale mail comes in three flavours, light, medium and heavy, given the fact that there won't be a lot of flying inside of the ship nor a lot of room to move around all six of the Dragoon's were squeezed into six medium suits before being loaded into six different strike craft and were launched out from the ship. Finding a available Air lock was as easy as waiting for the Batarian's crude boarding pods to dislodge from the ship and forcibly docking with the now free airlocks and thus the six man team were on board.
"Alright let's get this over with. Spread out and take the ship, no resistance spare them, resistance subdue them." Sheppard stated as she proceeded to release the hounds of war.
Whatever these were they were no Geth. Taller than any Geth Platforms they've seen, Green coloured shields of unknown design implacably blocked in coming slugs while the heavily armed thugs trying to defend the ship were walked up to, knocked over, and then literally curb stomped until their limbs were broken and twisted. They never even noticed the Battleship making it's way planet side.
"Parked in orbit mam." A pause. "Taking fire from Anti-air cannons. No damage."
"One shot each. Let's not waste any power on these incompetents." And thus Adek's entire anti-air capacity was completely wiped out. "Let the good doctor have his fun. Deploy the Custodian's too, we might as well keep some innocent people from getting killed in this colossal Mot Storm."
The slave camp was in a uproar, the sight of a massive dreadnought of unknown design appearing in orbit around the planet coinciding with the simultaneous destruction of their entire anti air capacity had thrown the Batarians on edge as they were locked in a struggle between trying to save themselves or their merch, which then coincided with a slave revolt as the neural pain devices normally used to keep the slaves in check suddenly short circuited and all the slaves proceeded to rise up and go on the offensive. As a fire fight was breaking out a drop pod suddenly came down like a meteor scattering slave and slaver alike. The pod burst open as the figure within emerged. A black containment suit like a Quarian albeit one who walked with a cane, that fanged skull with two glowing red LED light's for eyes though? That was not like a Quarian. Not at all.
"SUIT ZOMBIE!" Panic ensued in the crowd as they all backed away terrified.
"Sgniteerg morf dnoyeb eht liev evals fo eht Nairatab Eripme!" Machine gun fire was unloaded on the scary skeleton in a suit. He seemed more disappointed no one stopped the guards than he was being fired at, considering the green barrier that protect his body. "I eveileb uoy yam wonk eseht elpoep." A mass of green energy spread over the mass grave, light lit up in the wounds and eyes before the dead and damned within started to move. Other craters formed as the undead massed around the slaves and slavers, one of them a young woman in medium Scale Mail. Time to see if these people knew how to speak Batarian.
"We mean you no harm." Sheppard jumped off of a nearby cliff and landed on the ground in the middle of the field. "We came here for them not for you." Shepard pointed a single finger at a Batarian slaver, whom a Elcor picked up by the head and generously tossed over to Shepard's feet.
"What about us?" One Blue skinned woman asked hand raised in the air curiously.
"First let's try and figure out your situation." Most people here were abducted in raids by the Batarians, very few were actually born here.
Also they were intentionally stripped of Universal communicators and kept from learning any common languages precisely to keep them from revolting, they probably wouldn't have if not for the fact that the planet was obviously under attack. Smok, the Draconian of the Dragoon's, volunteered to stay behind to psionically translate languages, that left five Dragoon's and about two thousand corpses to break the Batarian Colony.
"Somebody get those bastard's under control!" The head of the mining colony snapped indicating the massive hoard that had gathered outside of the gate, by this point in time he had been holding down the button to zap the slaves but were thus far not succeeding. Course even if their pain receptors were properly functioning and not rotting like the rest of them the entirely separate issue was at hand that those devices were already long since removed and recycled. "Damnit! Give me that!" The head of the mine wrenched a gun out of one of his subordinates hands and took aim at the crowd firing a round off that to his credit manage to put a hole you can see through. "NOW GET BACK TO..." And then horror was compounded onto horror as the see through Turian managed to bend back forward anyway. "Work?"
As amusing as the thought of a horde of terrified slavers unloading their weapons onto a crowd of zombies was they had a schedule to keep. Which in this case meant getting that gate open.
"Sam?" The Chozo was sent above the crowd and basically took one look at the situation, lifted a leg into the air, and then slammed it down on the gate breaking it in half and collapsing the gate on top of the people who were trying to shoot through it and hell proceeded to break loose.
"Okay so the majority of you guys, don't want to go back to whatever colony you came from?" Smok asked while a Salarian was sitting in front of him. Just because the Batarians try their damnedest to keep the people here from being able to communicate with each other doesn't mean they don't. Some rather industrious Salarians managed to hack the signal that the slavers use for their, largely repurposed, slave technology and initiated a shut down signal that disabled the devices in question, now was just a matter of getting the devices removed. Towards that end a Salarian named Padok was elected as representative, partly because he did the act of blatant sabotage in question, but mostly because he actually understood what everyone was saying.
"Situation complicated. Many slaves born and raised in captivity. Others recognised the Citadel Council for failing them, both in not adequately defending their colony and not rescuing them afterwards. Also Gratitude and a sense of security, very effective motivations." The Salarian stated speaking in terse sentences. He didn't have a easy mind to read, a thousand thoughts per minute and they didn't necessarily lead into one another.
"Not all of our allies are going to be the kinds of things you are going to approve of." Smok stated in a warning tone.
"You already caused a zombie apocalypse! What can possibly be worst than that!?" Padok stated looking disbelieving. Cue the appearance of something worst. A drop ship lowered itself to the ground next to the conversing people from which the familiar mass of tentacles that was a Tebrid Custodian made it's presence known.
"Noogard Koms. Eht Dirbet Snaidotusc hsiw ot-"
"SYNTH!" One of the hysteria stricken Asari screamed as she rapidly panicked to get away and she wasn't the only one backing away.
"Really?" Smok asked with blatant disbelief on his features.
Omega was as it always was, a seething cesspit full of blatant corruption and psychopath's for hire. The latter led Batarian Pirate Admiral Bahak here to act on the interests of his kind, which in this case involved the solicitation of mercenaries to commit violence on their behalf. Such he was now speaking to three such experts, Ganar Yulaz a Krogan battle master and 'CEO' of the Krogan Blood Pack, Jona Sederis an Asari and leader of a mercenary company known as eclipse filled with biotic and tech specialists and finally Derius, a former Batarian SIU operative running the tight and professional army that is known as the Talons.
"Gentlemen, Ladies, Garm I will be brief. A situation has appeared on Adek, as this is one of our slave worlds we would rather the council does not become involved. Simply put we are being invaded..."
The STG footage from Adek was hard to believe.
When it first crossed Councillor Valern's desk he thought it was some new horror movie he was looking at. When he saw the person who sent it to him though was a STG Drone he was a little more concerned. He traced the hoard back to the mining pit where hundreds of captive slaves had been worked to death, and the thing that raised them dressed in something that resembled a Quarian, though based on the reaction the slaves had it was anything but.
"First contact. And this is what they see?" Councillor Tevos asked indicating the footage of the slave camp. "At the very least I believe this warrants a response. We start with putting together a first contact team." The group watched as a drop ship dropped off a silvery mass of tentacles which then had a conversation with one of the soldiers and the Quarian like figure.
"And a security team." General Sparatus added noting that one of those creatures managed to crush a entire gate.
Not half a mile away from where the council was holding a discussion, a heavily scarred red crested Krogan was doing some light drinking. Sadly Council laws tends to classify anything capable of getting him plastered as a potent neurotoxin but then again he wasn't there to drink. The bartender passed him his latest concoction and the Krogan took it off it's coaster and put it aside.
"Mr. Wrex I trust you find the payment we discussed to your satisfaction?"
"You're trying to butter me up. What do you want?" The Krogan had little patience for such formalities, as is the want of Krogan.
"I have become aware of a situation on the far side of the terminus system, it seems that the council is getting ready to make first contact with a new species. Sadly though they seem to have gotten off to the wrong foot with the local slavers."
"What a Shame." Wrex replied while taking a swing of his drink.
"Indeed. Naturally rather than resolved the situation by calling on the council for aide they've instead hired half of Omega's mercenary forces, including no shortage of Krogan. Sadly Krogan are much too stupid to act as decent spies. Present company excluded." Which means that they've finally come to the cusp of the conversation.
"I don't even bother to step foot inside of the Terminous system for less that two million." Wrex replied bluntly.
"I'm aware. And if you happen to acquire any of the newcomers technology in decent shape there may even be a bonus, depending on it's potential value."
"Done." Wrex finished his drink as he stood up and walked away, Meanwhile the Batarian who served the drinks took the coaster and put into the sink shorting it out.