Shepard Likes Rocket Launchers

-a Mass Effect story

*Mass Effect and all related characters owned by Bioware

~PART ONE: DEVIATION~

~Chapter 1~

The rock shook from the impact of an explosive. A cloud of dust and shrapnel sprung from the site of impact. The soldier crouched behind it winced.

"Oh, for f***'s sake. The geth have rocket launchers?!"

"It would appear so, sir," his second in command answered, rather unhelpfully. Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko was crouched on the other side of the small riverbed, behind a sturdy rock of his own.

Ashley Williams, peeking around a rock of her own slightly ahead of the both of them, spoke up. "Um, commander? Are we going to just sit around behind these rocks all day, or are we going to go get that beacon?"

Commander Shepard poked his head out of cover just long enough to flick off the offending geth troopers before retreating back behind his rock, plasma fire streaking through the space his head had occupied.

"What? Oh, right. Beacon. Why don't we get rocket launchers, anyways? Okay. Move up, staggered advance. Alenko, barrier up, you go first, on my signal. Williams, covering fire."

A wave of his hand, and the three of them were away.

Alliance Requisition Form vb

Requisition Number: R-13895-2583

Requested Items:

-Armax Arsenal ML-76 Rocket Launcher, x10

-Heavy Weapon Ammunition Fabricator Standard Power Cells, x512

To be delivered to: Docking bay D-422

Requisitioner: Supply Officer Postle (LTJG), SSV Normandy (SR-1), by request of Executive Officer Shepard (LCDR)

Status: Approved

Authorization: Hackett (ADM), authorization code A81700179

"Shepard?"

Shepard, seated at the Normandy's mess, looked up.

"Captain?"

Anderson walked from the front of his room to the table and sat beside him, a pile of papers in hand.

"I was going through the paperwork for this transition of the Normandy to your command, and I came across this requisition form." He handed the paper over.

Shepard gave it a once-over before handing it back. "Yeah?"

Anderson shot him a sideways look. "You requisitioned 10 rocket launchers and more than 500 standard power cells?"

"Mhmm."

"I… I shouldn't even ask. And Hackett actually approved it?"

"Mmmmmhmmmmm…"

"You're sure you didn't get Alenko to forge authorization?"

Across the hall, Kaidan tried his best to look offended as he examined the data at his work station. "What? I-I'd never do something like that, sir."

"Really? Don't make my faith in you seem misplaced, Kaidan…" Shepard sighed. "You can call the man yourself if you want to make sure."

Anderson let out a sigh of his own. "Well, try not to have TOO much fun while I'm back here slogging through this sea of political bull."

Shepard grinned. "Don't worry, sir. We will."

Author's Note: It seems a few people are reading this who have not played Mass Effect. Hence, I am writing a short codex for stuff you need to know for this story to make sense. I cannot and will not be held responsible for any grammer or spelling errawrs in the following section.

Warning you now: This is practically just a wall of text, with little entertainment value unless you really like sci-fi world building. If you are already familiar with the lore, nothing below should be needed to follow the story. Even if you're not, what follows is supplemental. I may do a more fleshed-out backstory thingymabob later that's more readable.

Humans found ruins of an ancient spacefaring race on Mars called the Protheans. Using the data on Mars, they discovered how to use a mysterious substance known as Element Zero (eezo) to create mass effect fields, used to make artificial gravity, Faster Than Light travel, highly effective mass accelerator weapons, and the like. Soon after, they discovered that Pluto's moon, Charon, is actually a massive ancient superstructure encased in ice. When activated, its massive eezo core generated a mass-less corridor far off into space, through which ships could travel almost instantly, many times faster than standard Faster Than Light. It was called a Mass Relay. A network of them is discovered, linking to a large number of systems. More are being discovered all the time. It is suspected that the long-gone Protheans constructed the mass relay network.

Human governments united in the Systems Alliance, organized with a Parliament and a Prime Minister. Humans soon ran into the Citadel Council races.

The Citadel: An ancient space station, composed of a ring called the Presidium and 5 arms extending from it called the Wards. Several kilometers long, with the ring's radius also several kilometers. It rotates, providing artificial gravity. The arms can close, sealing off the station and making it an impenetrable fortress of sorts, hence the name. Extending out from the Presidium is a large tower called the Citadel Tower, where the Citadel Council meets. It is assumed that the Tower also houses the Citadel's control mechanisms. It is suspected that the Citadel was constructed by the long-dead Prothean race. Found with the Citadel was a race of insect-like creatures known as the Keepers, which seem to maintain the station's basic functions but have no sentience. Not much attention has been paid to them, and they seem to keep the place tidy.

Asari: The asari were the first race to find the Citadel. They are mono-gendered, seeming very close in appearance to female humans, breasts and all (-_-) but are blue, and rather than hair, have tentacle-like cartilige head crests. They reproduce with odd mind-melding stuff, which can also just be used to exchange information. Because of this, they can mate and have children with any other species, but their daughters will always be asari. They can live for more than 1000 years. They have three life stages: maiden, matron, and matriarch. Matriarchs are quite old, and act as honored advisors to the rest of their people. All asari are natural biotics. Their government is an e-democracy: all citizens vote on everything. This can lead to slow decisions, but hey, they can wait.

Biotics: Eezo exposure causes odd things. Industrial accidents, crashes, etc lead to many eezo exposures to developing children. Most of the time, this caused life-threatening cancers. However, in a few lucky individuals, biotic powers developed. By manipulating tiny eezo nodules in their bodies, biotics can manipulate gravity around them, warping things with rippling mass effect fields, lifting things, crushing things, and creating shield-like barriers. Biotics are highly sought after by militaries for their many helpful abilities in combat situations. The asari homeworld, Thessia, has a very high concentration of eezo, and, as such, all asari are born with biotics, but not all choose to develop their skills in them.

Salarians: The salarians were the second race to find the Citadel. They quickly established diplomatic relations with the asari. They have very short lifespans, close to 40 years, but are highly intelligent. Their military doctrine is dominated by first strikes and covert ops. Their homeworld is Sur'Kesh. The Special Tasks Group (STG) is a branch of their military dedicated to high-priority covert ops.

Rachni: A race of insectoid hive-mind creatures. Discovered by a Citadel exploration team, they attacked without warning. The war lasted a long time, but eventually the rachni were hunted to extinction by the Krogan.

Krogan: A race of highly resilient lizard-like people. They have rapid regenerating flesh and redundant organs and bodily systems. They are very warlike and aggressive. On their own, they developed nuclear weapons and nearly destroyed their own planet (Tuchanka), which now lies in slightly radioactive ruins. They were discovered by the Council admist the Rachni invasion, and were pointed at the rachni and given spaceships. The Krogan won.

After the Rachni Wars, the Krogan wanted to expand, faster than the Council would let them. Hence began the Krogan Rebellions. They lasted until the salarians created a genetic weapon, called the genophage, that caused 1 in 1000 krogan children to die at birth.

During the Krogan Rebellions, the Council would have lost easily if not for the turians. The turians, an avian species with slight natural armor plating, were quite warlike but also very disciplined. Their fleets were strong, and they held off the krogan long enough for the salarians to develop the genophage. Their government is a meritocracy with a strict hierarchy.

The turians were granted a seat on the Council after the Krogan Rebellions. The Citadel Council currently consists of representatives from the Asari, Salarians, and Turians.

Citadel Space: A region governed by the Citadel Council.

Spectres: During the krogan rebellions, the Council created the Special Tactics and Reconnaissance branch, a group of elite agents to engage in clandestine frontline operations. They are not trained, but chosen. They get their hands dirty so the Council doesn't have to, defending Citadel space at any cost. They are widely feared/respected.

Terminus Systems: The area of the galaxy outside Citadel jurisdiction. Overrun by gangs and criminals and generally not good guys.

Attican Traverse: The area of the galaxy between Council space and the Terminus. Can be unsafe at times due to proximity to the Terminus. The humans have launched extensive colonization efforts here.

Batarians: A race of mostly humanoid 4-eyed people. Their space is quite close to the Systems Alliance, and they generally don't like humans very much. Their government, the Batarian Hegemony, approves of slavery. Ouch.

Geth: An artificial species of networked AIs. Created by the quarians. They rebelled against their masters, banishing the quarian people from their homeworld. They have remained in their own space, near the edge of the galaxy, for nearly 300 years. But now, they have made a sudden reappearance in an attack on the human colony of Eden Prime.

Quarians: A race of aliens. Their homeworld is Rannoch, near the edge of the galaxy. They were a spacefaring race, with several colonies, but when their homeworld was taken by the geth, the Council banished them from galatic politics. They now roam the galaxy in a Migrant Fleet, taking resources when available. Their communities are tightly knit, as resources aboard their flotilla are scarce. When quarians reach maturity, they are sent out on their own in a 'Pilgrimage,' told to bring back something of value to prove that they will contribute to quarian society rather than being a burden. Their names have several parts. (First)'(Last) vas (ShipTheyAreServingOn) nar (ShipTheyWereBornOn). Because they have lived in ships for nearly 300 years, their immune systems, which were weak to begin with, have deteriorated to the point where they need to wear enviro-suits at all times. Ouch.

People communicate easily through universal translators, either in implants or in their omni-tools. Omni-tools are small wrist-mounted devices that act as communicators, computers, hacking devices, and micro-fabricators capable of repairs, sabotage, and making micro-grenades to overload things. They're really cool. Also, holograms are everywhere.

Most weapons do not require ammunition, instead shaving metal projectiles off of large internal blocks, but they overheat easily and cannot be fired until cooled back down. Heavy weapons such as rocket launchers require just power cells, as the built-in micro-fabricator tech can create new ammunition on the fly.

Medi-gel is a substance that acts as a painkiller, disinfectant, and analgesic as one! Stops bleeding, stops infections, stops pain. Contrary to popular belief, doesn't actually fix you.

Kinetic Barriers, commonly referred to as shields, are repulsive fields that deflect fast moving objects such as bullets. Many scales exist. Personal ones, ship-sized ones... you name it. They don't block heat. They don't block lasers. Just fast moving solid matter.

Faster Than Light (FTL) travel: Spaceships use FTL to get places fast. What built-in FTL drives do is wrap the ship in a mass effect field, lowering its mass and allowing it to accelerate with standard engines to extremely high speeds. Needs the ship to be finely balanced, or lethal radiation spews everywhere.

The SSV Normandy SR1: Systems-Alliance Space Vessel Normandy, Stealth-Reconnaissance-One, a cutting-edge stealth frigate. The stealth is derived from an Internal Emission Sink (IES) system, which captures emissions and stores them to hide the ship. It can only run for a few hours, or perhaps days if minimal systems are active, before heat builds up inside the hull and cooks the crew.

Frigates are small scouting craft, crewed usually by less than 50 people. Cruisers are medium-sized, often with crews up to 500 people large. They can usually launch fighters. Dreadnaughts are massive, with crews sometimes numbering in the thousands. Their main guns are insanely powerful. Fighters are designed to fly up close and launch torpedoes, and also to shield large vessels from torpedo fire.

Spacecraft are armed with spinal cannons, which are large mass accelerators running the length of the ship. Their projectiles fly fast and strike hard, but can be blocked by shields / barriers. Disruptor torpedoes travel slower, but when they hit, mess up barriers and shields and cause massive damage. Point defense systems called GARDIANs (General ARea Defense Integration Anti-spacecraft Network) target incoming torpedoes and fighters and boil them away. They can also be used to engage enemy ships at close range, and as lasers go through kinetic barriers without resistance, all a ship has to defend against GARDIAN laser fire is ablative armor. Alliance ships use specialized torpedoes known as Javelins.

QEC is short for Quantum Entanglement Communicator, a prohibitively expensive information transfer device using two entangled particles to send low bandwith data instantly from one place to another without broadcasts or communications buoys.

Now, the Geth, accompanied by the rogue Spectre agent Saren, have attacked Eden Prime. He came in a giant monster ship, the likes of which has never seen before. Leads point to Matriarch Benezia, who seems to be working with Saren. Her daughter is an archaeologist, out on a dig in the Traverse. Leads also point to two human colonies who have reported odd activity: Feros, a world covered by ruins of once-great Prothean cities, and Noveria, a cold, corporate research world where law enforcement is run by the rich. Commander Shepard, a human of the Alliance, has been made the first human Spectre, and tasked with bringing Saren down and stopping his geth army.

Codex Addition: EMP weapons

Most military ships are prepared for EMPs in the form of nuclear weapons, and have shielded backup systems that will kick in if an EMP disrupts primary electronics. Directed, EMP-only weapons were generally considered impractical in ship-to-ship combat. They had a very limited effective range, and when powered by a standard vessel's generator, lacked the energy to penetrate the hulls of most ships. However, new STG prototypes have been developed, taking advantage of oversized drive cores and steady charge buildup to create a pulse that is capable of disabling a vessel, if only for a few minutes.

Codex Addition: Biotics and Control Gestures

Biotics are funny sometimes. They'd certainly been baffling to the human pediatricians who'd first discovered human children with such abilities. "Doc, my daughter just started tossed her dinner all over the kitchen without even touching it. What the f is going on?"

Asari doctors had studied biotics for millennia. After the mess of the Krogan Rebellions, still fresh in many asari minds, they'd been less than willing to share their research with the newly encountered humans. The humans, for their part, had been largely content to learn on their own.

There were plenty of justifiable reasons for this segregation of knowledge. Asari biotics were unique in that they were entirely natural: every asari was born with them. For humans, and, indeed, every other known species, biotics were the result of luck and usually-fatal element zero exposure.

As such, it made sense to the other races that the asari would keep their biotic secrets to themselves. They wouldn't be too useful to anyone else, anyways. What many didn't realize was how little of that information there actually was.

It was long suspected that the asari ability to link consciousnesses was related to their natural biotics. Some biotic instructors insisted that mastery of both skills were linked, but research found little evidence supporting a connection. Animals existed on other worlds with natural biotics, used to help them hunt prey or fend off predators. Gravity and the mass effect, after all, had nothing to do with one's thought patterns.

Asari were, in some respects, puzzled by their own evolution. While the benefits of such abilities were obvious, no other animals on their homeworld of Thessia possessed either biotics or the mind melding ability.

And biotics weren't just an evolutionary mystery: they were a scientific one as well. Most had figured out that biotic abilities were derived somehow by trace amounts of element zero in one's body. Manipulation of one's nervous system in certain ways could send electrical impulses to these eezo nodes, allowing for conscious projection of mass effect fields. Beyond this rudimentary understanding, however, almost nothing was known of how the fields were formed with the precision that trained biotics could demonstrate.

Most biotics used 'control gestures' to help them direct their nervous systems. Actions such as swinging one's arm might help one associate certain nerve impulses with certain actions, making biotic abilities easier to use. However, it's been proven through experimentation that such gestures are not required. A highly trained biotic can fling fields in any direction they choose without moving a muscle.

Codex Addition: Drell and Hanar

Hanar: A race of previously aquatic tentacle beings. Humans quickly coined the slang term "jellyfish" for them. They do fine out of water, however. Their speech is translated based off of bioluminescent impulses in their bodies. They hail from the watery world of Kahje. Their tentacle limbs are thin and long, but flexible and astoundingly strong. When standing, it seems incredulous that their bulbous bodies could be supported by such slender limbs.

Drell: A race of humanoid aliens. Two legs, two arms, two eyes. They are reptilian in nature, having evolved on the arid planet of Rakhana. They possess ability for perfect memory, being able to drop into a trance-like state of memory recall at a whim.

Their industrial revolution was far more powerful than that of the humans. Rakhana, as a result of this, rapidly had its resources depleted, its oceans dirtied, its soil contaminated. Overpopulation ran rampant. Almost 200 years ago, hanar explorers found them, and the Illuminated Primacy evacuated nearly 400,000 drell off of the planet. It was hardly alleviating: more than 10 billion remained to share the strained ecosystem. Society broke down, and now those left on the planet war against each other for the few remaining resources.

Those that left the planet mostly now reside on the hanar homeworld of Kahje, though some have ventured to various parts of the galaxy, fitting in well with galactic civilization.

Codex Addition: FTL Chase

If a ship wants to leave a fight, its best option is usually to flee via faster-than-light travel. Extended FTL travel is limited by drive core charge and hull heat. Getting to a battle usually causes buildup of the former, and the battle itself usually causes a large accumulation of the latter. Despite this, escaping with FTL absolutely still viable, as once a vessel goes into FTL, it becomes immensely harder to track and follow.

There are methods to pursue, however. A ship in FTL has its emissions magnified. When a ship enters or exits FTL, the sudden burst of radiation that is visible is called a 'radiation flash.' Most military ships have accurate-enough sensor arrays at multiple locations on their hulls to run detailed analysis on this radiation flash. Such information can be obtained as the fleeing ship's trajectory and its initial acceleration, which can be used to estimate where the ship will exit FTL. It's important to remember, however, that FTL is not instantaneous, and a ship needs at least a comparable speed to chase.

All chase jumps are gambles, though; calculated guesses as to where the target might be going. A fleeing vessel may perform several maneuvers to lose its pursuers. Zigzags or random jumps backwards and forwards are common. Major shipping lanes project significant amounts of chaotic ship radiation, even from many light-years away, and can complicate tracking.

Because of this, pursuit of ships running from battle is generally not recommended, although specialized ships, usually frigates, will still sometimes be tasked with a chase.