Inizio: Avanguardia
SSV Lionheart, Ma-at System, Far Rim, June 6, 2179 1842 Zulu
"Translation successful, Commander." The pilot of the Corvette-Class SSV Lionheart announced from the helm, the 140-meter ship bleeding its blue-shift emissions as the Galaxy Map of the CIC updated itself with the sensor readings of the Ma-at System. The FTL-translation from the Dholen System to the Ma-at System had been a tense one; the Far Rim belonged to the Geth. Though they had yet to encounter any of the synthetic Artificial Intelligence, it was surmised and thought that since the Far Rim was the only possible route into the Tikkun System of the Perseus Veil, that the Geth would be at the only entrance into 'their' homeworld in force. Surprisingly, that had not been the case, but it didn't relieve the tension that the fifty-eight man crew of the Lionheart felt while entering through the heliosphere of the Ma-at System. The System was a small one, possessing only one planet, Ammut. A few other celestial objects existed within the system; comets, asteroids, a dust belt that ringed outside of Ammut's orbit. Otherwise... just a Class-G Yellow Dwarf Sun and an incredibly large gas giant, larger than Jupiter. The Commander supposed that Ammut probably destroyed any other celestial body in the System, considering that 'Ammut' was Quarian for 'Devourer'.
Nothing else existed.
"Flight Lieutenant? Bring us to sub-light, low emissions." The Commander ordered, tapping a few buttons at the console to her right, the Haptic computer displaying a few pieces of information. "I'm sending you the coordinates that we got from Sidon and Camala. Looks to be... in Ammut, riding in the clouds. Bring us within .5 AU."
"Aye aye, Commander." The pilot looked back to acknowledge her commanding officer as she went back to piloting the Corvette. "Going at 7 AU an hour. ETA? Ten and a half hours."
"Good. Ops?"
"Nothing on the screen, Commander" Her XO rang out, the Lieutenant Commander working on his station as he read out several displays at his work station. "No communications, radio or tight beam. No comms buoy, no recon probes... not even a survey satellite. We won't pick up ship signatures at this distance yet, Commander, as we're too close to the systems' helioshock." The Commander nodded, knowing that they had just passed through the termination shock of the Ma-at System, where solar wind and interstellar wind collided, usually disrupting all sensors on ships of every kind and species. "From the look of things, systems' as quiet as the grave, skipper."
"Good. Keep me posted." The CO of the Lionheart replied as she looked at the Map, frowning. "Set Condition Amber, four hour shifts, starting with Shift Bravo. Weapons? Have Disruptor Torpedoes charged, prime, and ready, main cannon at nil. Ops? Shields at 25%, radiate at 10%, scan at infrared and ultraviolet spectrums, passive only. ECHELON? Prepare Electronic Warfare Suite Sword and Shield, on stand-by." The various personnel running each department of the Corvette affirmed their orders as the Commander looked at her private terminal, at the sole blinking light that reminded her that it contained a message. It had come while they had entered into the Dholen System through the Relay, but the thought of being in Geth Space had precluded her from indulging access to the vid file that was sent to her. "XO? You have the Con. I'll be in my ready room... my sister messaged me." Those last words were for her XO's ears alone, softly-spoken. The Lieutenant Commander's face turned from one of duty to sympathy.
"How is she?" He asked, a touch of concern in his voice. Everyone aboard the Lionheart knew who the Commanders' sister was... and what had happened to her four months before. But only the XO knew of the subsequent disastrous conversation between the sisters.
"Not good." She admitted bitterly, regret in her voice. "I didn't help things, either."
"Message her. Talk to her." The Lieutenant Commander suggested, looking to his Commander with a knowing nod of his head. "Everyone else is giving her flak. She could use a little encouragement."
"I know. I just..." The Commander sighed, thinking of her sister. Despite everything that had happened on that moon, she still loved her sister. How would she have done things if it had been her? Would things have gone better? Worse? Would she have made the same choices? Or would different choices have led to a worst disaster? She knew what the media was calling her sister; a monster, a murderer, a butcher. And she had flung it right into Jen's face, heaped with scorn and anger. Her sister had done something incredible, just like she herself had almost three years before. The difference between them? She had been lauded for her actions on Elysium, while Jen was being vilified for her role on Torfan. Oh, Jen... what happened down on that moon? The Commander thought, pain and sorrow lancing through her heart as she thought of her only sibling, the woman she first met at sixteen. Were you like me? Desperate to succeed? Or were things so out of hand and out of control that you had no other choice? "I'll message her and send it back as soon as we reach Dholen again. I'm getting rather tired of this fools' gold chase. I should go."
"Jannie... Jannie, wherever you are, I'm... I'm so sorry! I tried... so hard. They picked me for this, knew that I'm the best at what I do. I volunteered for it... responsible for it. I..." The Commander watched as she saw her sister break down, tears flooding her eyes and spilling onto her cheeks, wiping away the one on her unblemished cheek, while the one that ran down the diagonal scar that went from hairline to opposite jawline was left alone. "It... it was a trap, Jannie; they made it just for me. Knew I would come, that I wouldn't back down or let it slide. They... they had goddamn suicide bombers! Slaves! POWs! They would just throw up their hands and detonate themselves among us. I..." Her sisters' voice broke again as the vid showed her curled up in a chair, hugging her knees to her chest. "I... killed them. Every single one of them. I didn't know what else to do! So many of my men were dead, Jannie... my Battalion was decimated by the first wave of martyrs. I only had a couple hundred men left... and I gave the order." Jen's head went to her knees as she cried, sobbing for a few moments. "They're going to award me the Order of Luna for executing Batarian slaves strapped with bombs! For killing prisoners of war! Major Kyle flipped his shit and wouldn't respond, wouldn't send in his men to assist! I... I lost seventy percent of my men, Jannie, and they're going to give me a fucking award. It took me... a week to write all the condolence letters. Maybe Al-Jilani is right. Maybe I am nothing more than a butcher." She watched as her sister took a bottle to her lips, the label indicating that it was cheap whiskey as a large portion was guzzled. "Hannah... Hannah called. I... I couldn't look her in the eye. Couldn't... not after what happened with you. Hegemony's howling for my head, but Grissom won't cave. Told me that himself while I was recovering." Another slug of whiskey, and it broke the Commander's heart. "Is this all that I'm good at, all I'm good for? Did I really survive so much just so I could become a fucking monster? A butcher?" Another drink, the bottle now half-empty. "What was the fucking point of surviving Mindoir? Maybe I should have died like my family, with my family! Maybe I would be free of the pain and the nightmares and this fucking shithole of a galaxy!" The bottle went flying towards some wall off-screen, and the Commander heard the musical shattering of glass breaking. Her sister put her elbows on a table, holding her head in her hands as she sobbed loudly. "It wasn't the bombs that hurt, not the executions, not the accusations or the media labeling me 'the Butcher of Torfan'. Of all the things that hurt, it was my sister who did the worst."
"I'm sorry." The Commander whispered, touching the screen where her sisters' image was presented, her features tortured.
"If you ever want to message me..." Jen continued, "I'll respond. If you don't... I... I understand if you don't want to associate with a murderer, and I'll never contact you again." The woman on the screen pulled her head up from her hands as she chewed on her lower lip. "I lo... I... I should go."
The vid went black.
"Oh, Jen..." The Commander felt the grief in her heart twist, her sister's accusations not unfounded. Jen had been in the hospital, recovering, when the Sailor had visited the Marine. It had been two weeks after that disastrous raid, and she hadn't even stop to listen to Jen talk as she started throwing accusation after accusation. Murderer. Executioner. Child-killer. Butcher. Those words had flowed from her mouth like water from a broken dam, and Jen, confined to a hospital bed both from her injuries and a handcuff to the bed's railing, could do nothing else but listen to the tirade. Tensions were high between the Alliance and the Hegemony, and it looked like war was inevitable. What had truly bothered the Commander, though, was that the whole scenario sounded just like what someone who lived for vengeance would want; the chance to strike pain into those that had pained others. Jen... Jen had survived Mindoir. Torfan sounded like a dream come true; the chance to exact revenge in the same manner. The Commander hadn't even listened to her sister when she visited her in her hospital room, being treated like a criminal, using poisonous words on an already damaged soul.
Her sister needed here, now more than ever. What a fool she had been.
"Jen? It's me... it's Jannie." The Commander started recording her own vid in her ready room, sitting at her chair, thinking of all she heard. "I... I got your message. I'm out in the Terminus, following a lead ONI received out in the Skyllian Verge, and now we're way out here in the black. I... I'm the one that should be sorry, Jen, not you. You... you've always had the tougher road, had to earn everything you've every accomplished. I wasn't there on Torfan, and I shouldn't be the one to judge you for the actions you needed to take, to accomplish the mission, to get you and your men out alive. I... hadn't heard that they were using suicide bombers, just that... you were executing people." She had to take a pause for breath, to fight the tears that wanted to spill out. "Jen, you are my sister, and you'll always be my sister. I still remember the first day I met you nine years ago. I knew right then and there that you were something special, that you could accomplish so much. I believe in you, Jen. I'm sorry I let my mouth get the better of me... no, that's isn't exactly true. When I first heard... I was furious. I... I thought you lost it. How many slave outposts and ships have you tackled, and you never did anything like that before. I let them get to the better of me, and turned my back on the one person who has been there for me ever since we were teenagers. I love you, Jen, and I am proud of you. I... you deserve better than what I gave you, sister. When I come back, I swear I'll do my damnedest to make it up to you. Peace be unto you, Jen." The Commander ended the vid message, and the ache in her heart slowly lessened, the weight of it not nearly so heavy. She had done the right thing, finally. She set the console's settings to send the message out automatically as soon as they got near a comm buoy.
"Commander!" The voice of her XO came from the intercom, surprising her. "We've got a signature! You need to come look at this!"
"I'm on my way." The CO of the Lionheart rose from her seat, the excitement in the Lieutenant Commanders' voice obvious. Had they finally found it after three long weeks of searching? Everything after the ONI-sanctioned mission on Sidon had been one misstep after another, unable to catch their prey. The Commander jogged from her ready room, up a flight of stairs, and into the bridge, where she could immediately tell by the buzz of the Alliance Navy personnel that something was indeed going on. She went to the command chair and began accessing her chairs' arm display unit, bringing up various views of the separate departments' work stations.
In the depths of Ammut was their prize.
It was massive, an object well over two kilometers in length, larger and more massive than any other ship in the galaxy, including the Asari Destiny Ascension. The Commander looked at the passive scan that was viewed from thermal difference conduction emissions from Ammut, seeing the shape of the object as a large, black void. Various readouts were coming back as her eyes scanned the readouts, the marquee of information spitting out more information than her station could keep up with, spilling out onto another Haptic screen. What she read had her eyes widen.
"Ops? Am I reading this energy output signal correctly?" The CO asked, looking to her XO, who nodded. According to the read-out, the object was exuding more power than all of Arcturus! "How is that possible? This object is suppose to be inert!"
"Perhaps to keep it from falling into Ammut?" The XO theorized as an alarm rang from his station, making the man pale when he clicked on it. "Ma'am! The object! It's moving!"
"What?" The Commander looked at the read-out, and was shocked to see that it was building up speed... and quickly. But that's impossible! It accelerated from zero to past the speed of light immediately! No one can accelerate that quickly without ripping their ship apart! "Flight Lieutenant! Slingshot the gas giant, max speed, push us in the red! Full radiate, full shields! Weapons! Charge main cannon, and give me a solution for the torpedoes, post haste!" The Lionheart began to shudder as it built up momentum quicker than was safely advised, diving towards Ammut at an angle, using the gravity well of the gas giant to build up speed as the object broke through the cloud barrier. Now out of the gas giants' grasp, she was able to get a more accurate read-out of the object... of the vessel that now moved towards them, closing the distance rapidly. "Lieutenant! Get us out of here! NOW!"
BBBBBBBBBBWWWWWWWWWWUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMM!
Everyone aboard the Corvette-Class ship screamed in pain as a deep, brass note passed through the ship, like the choir of the damned shrieking doom, nails upon a chalkboard running through their minds and souls. Several Sailors collapsed as others wept in agony. The Commander fought against blacking out as she overrode safety protocols, spooling the FTL thrusters of the Lionheart; a suicidal folly so close to a gas giant.
"All hands! Prepare to pull massive G's!" The Lion of Elysium announced through gritted teeth, typing in her code to authorize the highly-dangerous maneuver. If the angle was too steep, she would be shooting them into the crush depth of the gas giant in no time. If it were too shallow, they'ed bounce off and lose speed and maneuverability, making them sitting ducks. If they were right... they'd FTL through the gravity well, using the gas giants' pull to slingshot them faster and further than even a Corvette was capable of. The Lionheart would undoubtedly take stress fractures and ruptures, not to mention the crew members would probably suffer minor breaks and massive nausea, but it was preferable to death. "FTL! In three! Two! One..."
BBBBBBBBBBBBWWWWWWWWWWWWUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMMMM!
The unearthly noise rang out again, and this time, most of the crew members were slumped to the deck of the Corvette, many of them bleeding from the ears as unconsciousness swept through most of the ship. The Commander screamed in agony as she fought off the encroaching darkness that threatened to knock her out, the ship still sailing towards Ammut at sub-light. She felt something dribbling down her chin, and when she wiped at her nose, the Commander was surprisingly detached at the sight of her own blood leaking heavily from her nostrils. She reached a bloody hand towards her displays, where she had yet to activate the emergency blue shift protocols to escape as the object grew ever closer. Only a tenth of an AU away...
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!
The Commander struggled to stay awake, forcing herself back into consciousness as the darkness threatened to obliterate her. She stood from her command chair, her body sluggish and almost unresponsive as her unfocused eyes noted passively that everyone else on the bridge had collapsed and fallen to the deck, knocked-out by the strange attack by the object. The CO of the Lionheart was dimly aware that they were all going to die, that this farce of a mission was going to kill them all. The Galaxy Map changed to show the object growing closer, looming in front of her, its electronic representation bringing a horror to her that she had never known before as segments of the bow began to spread open like a grasping hand, ready to snatch them all into the grave as the center of the bow began to charge up into a glow of hellish light, the vessels' main cannon preparing to fire on the Corvette.
The Commanders' final thought was that she regretted that the message to her sister would never be sent, that Jen would think she died hating her.
Alliance Forces Network; Serving Sol Since 2147! Like Us On SpaceBook, Flitter, ExtraGram, LinkdUp!
#AFN, #LionElysium, #Shepard, #Lionheart
COMMANDER SHEPARD M.I.A.
August 27, 2179
Fleet Master Jon Grissom of Arcturus Station confirmed rumors today of the disappearance of the SSV Lionheart, CO'ed by Commander Jane Shepard, the Lion of Elysium. On a peacekeeping mission in the Petra Nebula, the Lionheart went out of contact over three months prior after last transmissions put it over the planet of Sidon. Alliance and Independent Earth vessels have scoured the Vetus system and its planets in search of the Corvette, crewed by over seventy Alliance Sailors and Marines, with no success. This is what Fleet Master Grissom had to say at an earlier press conference.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the press... we've searched the entirety of the Vetus System, swept every rock, probed every hole, and combed every space dust field. The Lionheart is nowhere to be found. There were no distress beacons, no emergency signals, no escape pods, no crash site, and no debris field. After two months of extensive and exhausted searching... I've had to call it. The Lionheart, its crew, and the Lion, are officially Missing In Action, and further searches done by the Alliance Military will be suspended permanently until further proof can be established." (pause) "The Lion... she's gone. Don't know how or where, but I'm not optimistic. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to drink my Goddamn sorrows away, so don't bother with questions. That will be all."
Commander Jane Shepard, 25, rose quickly to galactic popularity after the famed Assault of Elysium, where a conglomerate band of pirates, mercenaries, bandits, slavers, and gunmen assaulted Bernard, Elysium. Then-1st Lieutenant Shepard was credited with the defense of the city, rallying militia, Colonial Army, Elysium Frontier Marshals and the civil servicemen, evacuating colonists and fighting off enemy forces for twenty hours before Fourth Fleet came into the colony's aid. Awarded the Star of Terra for her actions, Commander Shepard was brought into the galactic spotlight, becoming a symbol that many among humanity believed to be the best and brightest that Earth had to offer, nicknaming her the Lion of Elysium. Today is indeed a sad day for Earth and the Alliance with the Lion now gone.
Commander Jane Shepard is survived by her mother, Captain Hannah Shepard, Lead Navigator of the SSV Kilimanjaro, and her adopted sister, Major Jennifer Hale, the infamous Butcher of Torfan, who was recently awarded the Order of Luna and given command of the 2nd Battalion Tactical Response Unit of Pennacle Station under Admiral Tadius Ahern.
Ssgt Raphael Sbarge, Staff Writer.
A/N: The title of the chapter, Inizio: Avanguardia, is Italian. It stands for Beginning: Vanguard.
The Corvette-Class doesn't exist in the ME-verse, but was something I originally worked up in my Battle Series, and used in my Mass Effect vs. Aliens/Valkyrieverse series, based off the American Navy Corvette vessel. It is smaller than a Frigate, and is used for harassment and 'infiltration', as the heat output is low, and can be missed due to running at a lower energy state than most warships. It is exclusively Alliance, much like the Carrier, and are knicknamed 'Knuckledusters' for their short-range distruptor torpedoes, forcing the Corvette to fight at knife-range.
I tried going for that sound; you know, the one in ME 3 that had you scurring about like a rat in the maze because you pulsed your little search option one too many times? Describing it in words was hard, but those folks from Eden Prime, the one that tell you about Powell, came up with the description 'sounded like the choir of the damned' is as good as any, though in reality, it is a series of string and brass instruments that make that BWUM! noise.
I used several modern references for H/M'verse, as well as borrowing some from Valkyrieverse. Armed Forces Network is, in fact, an actual news agency, operated and manned by American Military personnel, which I change to Alliance Forces Network. 'Spacebook' is Facebook, 'Flitter' is Twitter, 'ExtraGram' is InstaGram, and 'LinkdUp' is LinkdIn'. Hashtags evidently still exist. Still to this day, I never have, nor will I ever, use Twitter. I just find it amusing to throw them up there.
Raphael Sbarge is a real person, the voice actor for Carth Onasi of KOTOR and Kaiden Alenko of Mass Effect. I suspect that since I will be using Jennifer Hale and Mark Meer (both Shep's voice actors) as characters, that I'll find a way to insert some of the others, such as Seth Green, Lance Henderikson, Keith David, Tricia Helfer and Kimberly Brooks, into the mix as well.