AN: Hello all. I'm a long time reader, first time poster who noticed the dearth of BattleTech fiction on the site and decided to do something about it. Many things are non-canon from the BT side of things. I had to do a bit of manipulation to get Spectre into the ME Universe with enough tech support to not only survive but thrive. If anything is incorrect it is most likely intentional, but let me know anyway, and if it was a mistake I'll do my best to correct it.

Mechwarrior belongs to whever owns that particular hot potato of a license at the time you are reading this and Mass Effect is property of Bioware.

Enjoy!

MechEffect

26MAR3070 – Zenith Point Furillo

Daniel Schumacher floated toward the door to the 'MechBay of the Overlord DropShip he had recently 'acquired' for his merc unit. Of course very few knew his name, because who would you rather sign up with, Schumacher or Spectre. With their recent performance in the FedCom Civil War, he supposed it didn't really matter what he was called now, results spoke for themselves. When he formed the unit they were one of a dozen merc groups of varying size and quality signing up for a franchise from the crippled Gray Death Legion looking for some quick c-bills and some LosTech, now Spectre's Marauders were the only surviving GDL unit, stronger even than the original Legion had been before its destruction on Hesperus II. He had earned a reputation for effectiveness and loyalty, staying with Katrina Steiner's flagging cause until it effectively ceased to be a political entity. Now that loyalty was paying dividends. Defiance Industries, an old client from the FedCom war days, needed security to shift half of its Furillo production line off world, reducing the chances that a single Word of Blake strike could bring their entire company to its. They were also moving the production line for Gray Death Technologies, a recently acquired subsidiary producing advanced, for Inner Sphere, battle armor. They were all hitching a ride on a Defiance owned Invader JumpShip. It made for quite a sight in the shuttle ride over; the enormous Mammoth DropShip holding Defiance's cargo, the Overlord holding the BattleMechs, Battle Armor, and Aerospace Fighters of the Marauders and the Achilles assault DropShip included for defense in case they ran into any WoB ships on the way; all attached to the Invader JumpShip ready for departure.

Daniel was proud of the unit that he had built during the war, almost none of the 'Mechs they operated were purchased; rather they were hard won salvaged chassis. Each had seen one short, sharp battle against the Marauders, then many more by their side. He liked to come down to the 'MechBay often to inspect the titans of the battlefield that he made his name and fortune in. Each 'Mech had its own personality and quirks picked up over years of conflict and maintenance that was perhaps not to the standard its designers had intended in the case of the older models. And each one was perfect. The Marauders never took a job unless salvage rights were included, so they had the pick of many different chassis of the same 'Mech variant. Daniel would test each of the new 'Mech frames, learning its tendencies and keeping those that performed best, stripping the rest for spare parts and selling what was left over. This left the unit with a battalion sized stable of 'Mechs to choose from, although they rarely deployed more than two lances, or stars depending on who was in charge of ground operations that day, at a time. This gave them the flexibility to be light scout unit one day and then turn around and be an assault lance the next.

"Thought I would find you down here. You know they are not going to disappear if you don't watch them, quineg?" Said a voice from behind him.

"Hey Aisa, nice to see I've taught you some humor, next we'll have work on contractions."

"I will continue to speak as a proper warrior should, I cannot understand how you Spheroids can butcher words Commander."

"Well Star Colonel, we'll uncivilize you yet and you can live among the unwashed freeborn masses like the rest of us." Daniel retorted jokingly. "Come on Aisa, you know you love me."

"And you are damn lucky I do, or I am certain I would have snapped and killed a crewman at least a year ago." Aisa sighed. "But as fun as this is I did not come down to trade barbs. The captain of the Invader has announced that we will be jumping in 15 minutes. I came to make sure you secured yourself."

"Are you sure you didn't come down here because you want to share an acceleration couch with your favorite 'MechWarrior?" Daniel asked, waggling his eyebrows.

Aisa broke into laughter. "Damn it Daniel, you made me laugh. I can't be the bitchy clanner XO if any of the maintenance crew see me laughing my ass off."

"And I got you to use a contraction. We're making progress." Daniel leaned in and stole a kiss from his wife. "Come on, if we're late to the bridge you might just have to share a seat with me." He said as he moved back into the corridor on the way to the bridge.

"Would not be the worst thing to happen" said Aisa as she followed, waggling her eyebrows back at her husband.

In the bridge of the Ibn Battuta, the Invader class JumpShip tasked with moving the small task force at FTL speeds on its journey, the Jump countdown was proceeding as normal as it had for hundreds of jumps previously and for many more in its future. But unknown to its crew, Hyperspace was not as uniform as is believed; there are rifts and cracks that lead to miss jumps. Some propel the JumpShip a distance far longer than would be possible, some throw the ship off target, and some make the JumpShip and all aboard simply disappear. At the time that this particular Jump countdown reached zero, the Zenith Jump Point the Ibn Battuta was departing from was in the middle of a shifting rift on the scale of the Marianas Trench on Terra. The JumpShip left the Jump Point with no indications of distress, but when it failed to reappear at its destination on time it was declared missing. When It failed to reach its destination 3 months later it was declared lost with all hands. Defiance Industries stock took a massive drop when the loss of a quarter of its production capacity was announced. What no one in the Inner Sphere would ever know was that the Ibn Battuta was lost, but more in the locational sense than the structural sense. They had just entered a new world, like its namesake, and its people would need to adapt to their new reality.