Drifting lazily through the endless expanse of the nightmarish void known as the galaxy, a single mass of cold harden metal swirled and rolled weightlessly through the abyss.
Dark grey metal glittered lightly in the distant rays of a warm, burning orb of a local star cast rays of intense radioactive light. Heating the surfaces of the various planetoids orbiting the burning mass in a perfect little star system. But that was insignificant, for every star that dotted the darkness of the void there would always be planets lingering in their gravitational pull.
Thousands of world sat in the rift of time, waiting for that one day they would burst with movement of a civilisation. All this was far from Shepard's mind as she spun her hull around once more, optics scanning the system with pitch perfect detail and streams of computerised data that was relayed through real time back to the Consciousness.
A burst of flames across her hull brought Shepard's 340 meters of length to a slow graceful halt, or as close as one could in the weightless expanse of space.
Shepard's hull plates rippled as she moved her wings, the large solid mass splitting into long spindling limbs that burned softly with blue energy.
Tilting her reptilian like head to the side, Shepard's optics scattered across her muzzle took in the system around her. Optics traveling over the various planets until they settled upon one mass in particular.
A message flared across her gaze, computer systems kicking into over drive as she recorded an explosion of data input receiving from her long range scanners.
She found it, another Mass Relay sitting in uncharted space just waiting to be activated. That was her mission, the Consciousness sent her to scout out new relays for expansion purposes.
Over the past 3 years, she had single handily mapped out over 70 various Relays clustered in dark space. Relays that sometimes doubled back to old systems, while others launched her to unexplored systems just waiting for civilisation to touch their frozen graves and breathe life into it.
Adjusting her hull, Shepard dived forwards and activated the pulse engines in her wings, causing her massive dragonic frame to glide silently through space.
A small sub routine indicated she was 67 000 km from target destination, that was nearly an hour or more of solid travel.
Dismissing the data, Shepard kept her main processing power on the dormant structure sitting silently in orbit over a gas giant. The machines surface was covered in a thin layer of ice, clear indication that the relay had been dormant for thousands of years without use.
As she drew closer and closer to her destination, Shepard noticed she wasn't the only warship lurking in this star system.
Warning lights flashing across her digital mind, Shepard brought up a visual on the ships moving on an intercept course with her.
'Those aren't Collective ships…..' Realised Shepard as she flickered her body about to cease her approach, she didn't have any programs of guide lines for approaching unknown warships.
Did she just discover a new species by accident?
Shepard's optics zeroed in on the approaching warships, her systems taking in the kinetic based weaponry lining their hull and he spinal mounted main guns. Guns that could really do some damage if fired upon her.
'And their powering weapons…. Shit' bringing her kinetic barriers to full power, Shepard diverted 1/3rd energy output from her core to the particle cannon turrets mounted across her shoulders.
Do not fight, flee and return to the Collective snapped the voice of the Conscious in her head, making her silently scream in space as the voice ripped through her mind like a sharp knife.
But no one disobeyed the Conscious, so reluctantly Shepard diverted power from weapons to engines and launch herself at maximum sunlight velocity towards the dormant relay. At the same time broadcasting a signal to the large prong like device which flickered to life with various blue lights.
In the distance, several 500 meter long warships with sweeping bird like hulls powered up their primary Mass Accelerator cannons. Heavy 10km slugs of compact steel were loaded into weapon tubes, while mass effect fields lowered the projectiles molecular mass while also powering the magnetic field used to launch the unguided slug through space.
In the blink of an eye, the there was a blue flash and a duo of projectiles flung themselves from one of the unknown warships at a jaw dropping velocity of 3000km/s.
Shepard acknowledged the warning from her sensors of incoming ordinance, in reply she began darting about at random. Twisting aside the deadly projectiles hammering her position like a machinegun, with each slug carrying the kinetic energy of a small nuclear weapon.
At maximum power, she could withstand a few dozen shots from such weaponry. Or so her computer told her as one of the projectiles hit there mark and detonated with a small explosion of light against a glowing sphere that engulfed Shepard, protecting her from harm.
More shells found their mark, despite Shepard's disparate flying the enemies' rate of fire was too much to avoid and she couldn't move fast enough to out run such weaponry. All she could do was let inertial carrier her to the now glowing form of the Mass Relay while she locked down her body in preparation for a faster than light jump.
Zipping through space, a slug zoomed in on target and hurled itself at the fleeing dragon like warship. With a silent explosion and roar of pain, Shepard was helpless to act as that tiny 10kg slug tore a gaping hole through her mid-section, blasting away piece of armour plating and various machines used to keep the sentient warship operational.
'AHHHH!' screamed the warship silently as synthetic pain receptors exploded across her frame, mimicking real life pain as if she was an organic being.
With metal cannon shells trailing behind her, a blue tendril of lightning lashed out like a whip to grab Shepard's frame. The space in front of her pulsed with energised ripple as she moved faster and faster, then with a blue flash of light and a powerful pulse from the Relay, Shepard was sling shot into light speed.
Several minutes passed as Shepard was hurtled light years through space in a blink of an eye, before rapidly decelerating in another system beside an active relay that pulse with energy.
With her frame battered and bruised, Shepard could only drift through the void powerlessly as sparks issued from the gaping hole in her side. Inside her hull, amongst pulsing walls of synthetic flesh and hissing mechanical parts of machinery. Blast doors slid shut to conserve atmosphere amongst the few small cavities Shepard was outfitted with to possess a small crew if necessary.
At the moment however her hull was vacant of other life forms, meaning she was wounded, drifting and unable to repair the damage to her hull.
But that wasn't all, Shepard felt nauseous as she realised something was missing, a certain overpowering presence in the back of her mind was gone?
'The Conscious….. It's gone!' she realised, then paused as she noticed everything suddenly felt alien to her.
She felt unnatural, she felt stiff and bulky, like she was trapped in thick clothing or… maybe armour plating but why did she feel like that.
Using several small emergency thrusters along her hull, Shepard maneuverer herself so her chest and lower but was illuminated by the distant local star.
Curving her neck, Shepard looked down at herself, taking in the jagged pieces of thin armour plating that lined her wounded midsection.
Memories began to stir, blurred but still there as Shepard began to notice things she'd never realised before in her life.
She had claws, her skin was metal? Why did she have particle cannons on her shoulders? Were those torpedo tubes? That's an airlock here… and this is an point defence gun hatch… All in all a human being wasn't outfitted with such technology.
Rubbing a claw against her own chest, Shepard dully felt the artificial sensory nerves relay data to her, not the actual texture of her hull but raw mechanical data.
'What happened to me?' Shepard wanted to cry, but her voice was silent in the airless void of space leaving no one to hear her cries of sadness and distress.
As she thoroughly inspected herself, Shepard didn't notice a planetoid in the distance grow larger and larger by the minute as the sentient warships inertia continued to carry her through space. It wasn't until several proximity alerts snapped across her vision, did Shepard notice the asteroid belt looming towards her.
'Shit shit shit!' she cursed as she spun herself around, using her arms to push smaller asteroids aside while also using her limbs to dampen the impact against larger mounds of metal and rock that dwarfed her frame.
Weaving clumsily through the asteroid field, Shepard emerged upon the other side covered in dust particles and sported several new dints and scrapes across her hide from various collisions she experience.
Exhausted, Shepard diverted all her power to the emergency pulse engines and drive core. The molecular mass of Shepard's form dropped significantly and across her hull small blue engines swirled to life pulsing with burst of energy to control her movement through space.
Now weighing 1/5 of her original weight, Shepard reassigned axillar power from non-critical systems towards the forward pulse engines. Her velocity lowering, Shepard angled her body and adjusted the direction of her inertia for an orbital entry into the planet below. She was after all currently trapped in the planetoids gravitational pull.
Dropping through the planets atmosphere in a blazing ball of fire, Shepard's body produced arks of lightning through the sky as the static energy building up across her frame created by air friction began di discharge in all direction.
Plummeting like a stone into the planets lower atmosphere, Shepard slowly emerged from the ball of flames with her hull glowing red hot and on the point of liquefaction.
As Shepard flared her damaged wings and tried to restart her primary pulse engines, she discovered her long sleek hull had one very significant drawback. She flew with the aerodynamic performance of a brick. Actually a brick might have more success as Shepard managed to only angle her fall into a sharp descent towards a field of red sand.
Crashing with 1/5 her original weight, Shepard's hull avoided significant damage as it plagued through the sand like a bull dozer. Carving a sky scraper size gashed through the sand fields that was deep enough too burry a house.
Carving her way through the sand, Shepard's frame suddenly latched itself into a hidden mass of stone buried beneath meters of sand. With inertia stubbornly refusing to stop, Shepard's rump came flying into the air, causing the dragon like warship to roll forwards and onto its back with a sicking crash of metal.
Sand cascaded through the air like rain, showering the dark grey hull armour of Shepard's body that sat there emotionlessly in the colossal trench she gauge across the land.
Inside her hull, Shepard's circuitry and computer systems were still spinning from the force of the crash landing.
Shepard felt tired, she just needed a few minutes to laid there and rest… Or maybe a few days…. Okay a week she defiantly needed a week.
'I don't get paid enough for this shit… do I even get paid?' wondered the warship as she slowly raised her head, optics flickering through cracked or shattered lenses leaving her partly blinded.
Hydraulics hissed as Shepard's right arm pushed against the sand around her, slowly forcing the warship onto its side where Shepard tucked her knees in towards her chest and her tail towards her nose. Pain receptors across her hull burned way furiously, damage reports flickered past Shepard's gaze in a wall of gibberish she couldn't understand.
Curling up into a foetal position, Shepard audio projectors in her jaws began to make a sobbing sound of sadness and pain. She was confused, alone and above all else, she was in pain.
'Please…. Someone out there… help me' whispered Shepard as a feminine voice escaped her metal jaws to linger ghostly upon the wind.
To be Continued….
An Idea I've been wanting to implement for a while since I began MASS EFFECT: Lost Guardians, the basis behind this story is a little like Matrix. Except well I'll get around to the explanation later in the story but I do hope this has caught peoples interest.
I am trying to design Shepards hull but its difficult to make a dragon look like an opera table space ship. And next chapter I'll post some specs about Shepard's hull, engines and weaponry etc etc.
Hope you all enjoy, thoughts and feedback are always welcomed!
Oh and I do not own the cover image or mass effect.
I gotta find the owners page so I can credit them with the artwork I kinda lost it whoops...