((Author's Note: So several months ago I learned of a new video game coming out called No Man's Sky. It has since launched (in a cloud of hype and controversy, I know), however back before launch my wife Bladhaire had a brilliant idea: what if Del Shepard and Liara T'soni, at some point in the events of Dark Energy, happened to get stranded in the universe of No Man's Sky? The idea started out as just a fun talking point but soon grew into a plan...and that plan grew into what you see before you now.
I present the one and only crossover I ever intend to help write (I tend to avoid crossovers like the plague). I say 'help' write because my wife is a full partner in this tale and will be penning much of Liara's point of view, while I will be penning much of Del's.
Those of you who follow Del's facebook page might already be familiar with this as we started this there several weeks ago. Check out Del Shepard's facebook page, Liara Tianlan T'Soni's facebook page, or the Classified: Dark Skies facebook page if you haven't yet or are interested. Everything that was published there so far (save images) will be published here today. Any further publications will be made to both sites, although some of the longer ones will probably only be teaser published on the facebook page and then linked to the appropriate full chapter here for length reasons. Y'all know how I like to run on :D
Updates will be every Saturday; my other three ongoing stories will continue to update as often as I can manage the rest of the week- they're slow but they have not and will not stop.
For those not familiar with my work a few of the usual notes: I do not apologize for spoilers. There will be spoilers in this story. As No Man's Sky has only been out just over a week this may become an issue with those of you who have just started playing or who intend to play. This is the only spoiler flag I will give, so read at your own discretion if you want to avoid spoilers for NMS.
I also tend to write very left-of-canon a lot of the time. For those of you who *have* played NMS, any changes to canon in this story are intentional and will be done for the narrative's sake.
For now I will stop jawing and let you get into it. Thank you and happy reading!))
CLASSIFIED: DARK SKIES
ATTENTION- EYES ONLY:
The following data, records, and information is highly classified. Any unauthorized party accessing these records, or any authorized party disseminating these records to unauthorized groups, entities, or individuals, will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of law under Intergalactic Union treatise A-8769-241.
**PROCEED NO FURTHER IF YOU ARE UNAUTHORIZED UNDER CODE 4713 OR POSSESS A CLEARANCE RANKING LESS THAN A-1-3**
PROJECT: DARK SKIES
Private Log 8133-2911-A
Date: {REDACTED}
Department of Fold Diagnostics, Research and Maintenance
Director Naes Y'rrum-T'soni
Log Entry 1
Proceeds:
I don't normally do private logs. I suppose it brings a sense of returning to childhood- it's too much like keeping a diary. Secrets and silly musings are kept in diaries and for those that know me well, secrets and silly musings have never been my cup of tea.
Most might find that funny, considering I work with some of the most classified information and technology in the known universe. I don't view that as secret keeping so much, however. To me, secrets are personal things, and classification is impersonal. It is a broad form of necessary security to the operations of the Project and to the function of any government or overseeing body.
The data I am going to impart here falls under this classification and is being shared with all necessary parties. However among that classified information I have discovered a secret- a deeply personal and fascinating secret that will only ever be known by a small handful outside of myself and my own superiors.
This secret, however, is not the small kind that can be safely contained and kept to myself, but I am unable to share it even with my own husband and children. I have never had an issue with that regarding classification, but never have I been faced with withholding something so intimate and so enormous from them before. Utilizing my personal log option for the first time in my career affords me the opportunity to…process? Perhaps, or to at least release the energy of this secret into another medium so that it feels less like I might burst with it.
We have always been aware of a wide variety of signals that traverse the Folds every time one in the system is connected to allow travel. These include background noise from the area which the Fold is linked too, stray transmissions from the same, and like phenomenon. However for the last several years we have detected a near-constant 'signal' that is present every time a Fold is connected or traversed. At first this was only dismissed as more background noise- merely an echo of interstellar or intergalactic radiation filtering through the open Folds.
Then, ten years ago, we were able to isolate this particular 'signal' well enough to determine that it was in fact artificial in origin and not a part of any natural phenomenon. Since that day, my team has worked tirelessly in an attempt to understand the signal and to trace its origins.
One year ago, we finally succeeded.
The signal appears to originate outside of our universe, entering the Fold network from another one of the uncounted trillions of multiverses that make up known reality. More, the signal appears to be a constant transmission of data- six yottabytes worth of information since we started to capture and download it from the streaming signal, and still there is more incoming. It will take many asari lifetimes before even the information we have discovered can be analyzed, but until three days ago we were unable to understand any of the data we had been capturing.
We finally seem to have cracked the transmission encryption. We are still trying to wrap our collective heads around what this data contains. It seems to be planet and atmosphere analysis, an analysis of physics and astronomics-biology, anatomy, geology, medicine, observational theories- the list is endless.
It is almost as if something or someone out there is trying to…
Well, there's no way else to say it. It is as if there is some species or entity out there attempting to catalogue the entire multiverse, and it is busily transmitting this catalogue through the Fold network via this signal to any race or species capable of discovering and translating it.
If that were not surreal enough, this morning I came across some astounding and personal information buried in all this data that-…well, that prompted me to begin this log, this…this venue for relieving the pressure of a secret that cannot be contained within my own mind or spirit.
Hidden inside those yottabytes of information we found lives, names- the records of individuals. Thousands of them; millions. And among those records I found two names instantly familiar to most anyone in the known universe- my own great-grandparents, Admiral Delilah Shepard and her asari bondmate, Liara T'Soni.
And not just their names! Images, journal entries, records, observations- a wealth of data tied to them that describes something utterly impossible.
These records seem to chronicle in detail a two year period in the lives of these two incredible people that by all accounts should be impossible. Two years of the inexplicable, the unfathomable, the astonishing. Two years that, until this morning, no one even knew existed.
We are still working through this data; there is much that needs to still be decrypted and analyzed. We are also attempting to find out the veracity of these accounts; third party verification that these things really did happen. Debriefing records from the old Alliance, perhaps; classified documents held by the Thessian government of the time; even just stories told to their children.
I will be recording our progress here, in this log. As access to this accounting is as secure as any other official documentation I will also be including copies of the journals, images, videos, logs and records that accompany this mystery.
We are left with a mountain of questions and I fear that seeking the answers will only lead to more of the same.
To start, how could two of the most pivotal and famous figures of the time go missing for two entire standard years without any record of the fact? How could they record two years' worth of information, discovery, and private journal entries whilst never- to our current knowledge- mentioning it again to a single other living soul in this universe? Is this an enormous hoax, or did something strange and astonishing truly happen here?
As a scientist, and as a T'soni, it is my honorable duty to find out.
Log entry 1 ends.
ATTENTION- EYES ONLY:
The following data, records, and information is highly classified. Any unauthorized party accessing these records, or any authorized party disseminating these records to unauthorized groups, entities, or individuals, will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of law under Intergalactic Union treatise A-8769-241.
**PROCEED NO FURTHER IF YOU ARE UNAUTHORIZED UNDER CODE 4713 OR POSSESS A CLEARANCE RANKING LESS THAN A-1-3**
PROJECT: DARK SKIES
Private Log 8133-2912-A
Date: {REDACTED}
Department of Fold Diagnostics, Research and Maintenance
Director Naes Y'rrum-T'soni
Log Entry 2
Proceeds:
I have spent most of the last few days attempting to establish the veracity of some of what we have found. Sifting through the data specifically tied to Shepard/T'Soni, we have discovered what appears to be a 'starting point', from which all further entries and recordings stem.
My next entry will contain this initial record and further entries will attempt to put subsequent records into their logical or most plausible sequence, so that we can sort this data into a rough timeline of events.
For now, my focus has been on this initial record. It appears to take place during a period of Shepard and T'soni's lives where their ship, the Normandy, had been wrecked. The data in this record seems to have been captured via a third unknown party. It indicates Shepard and T'soni were at some point in time visiting the wreck of Normandy, when they were lead into a series of odd circumstances resulting in this mysterious two year 'journey'.
My initial parameters were very clear: first, I had to establish that the Normandy had at one point, under the command of Delilah Shepard, crashed. I had to verify that this crash took place on a world with an environment identical to that described in this recording. Then, I needed to know for certain that both Shepard and T'soni had visited the wreckage at a given point and that they were alone when they did so.
If I could solidify that these events did in fact occur as described, then I could be certain of several things:
1: That this is a true accounting of something that did occur to Del Shepard and Liara T'Soni, and not a hoax.
2: That this is a true accounting of our Del Shepard and Liara T'soni, and not that of one of their Multiverse doppelgangers.
3: That therefore, the records that antecede this initial recording are more likely themselves to be true accountings if the veracity of the initial can be established in fact.
With that in mind, there was only one way for me to begin. I had to gain access to the archived historical records of the old Alliance. There are plenty of stories of Del Shepard and Liara T'Soni of course, as well as that of the Reaper War; but as those events are separated from the present day by nearly two millennia of time, one must take a pragmatic approach. Even well recorded facts get distorted over time, intermingled with legend, hearsay, and flat out embellishment. The truth of the time must be sifted from the chaff of mythology, and for that we had to go straight to the horse's mouth, as it were.
Fortunately, my clearance level made the retrieval of this information a difficult, but not daunting prospect. I was able to gain access to the sealed records, and with them I was able to root in undeniable fact the following:
1: That the original Normandy had in fact crashed on the planet of Alchera after Shepard had defeated Saren Arterius, but before she had confronted the Collectors. It was never retrieved, and the site was later made into a memorial at the behest of the Volus government. It now lies nearly six hundred feet under ice, and remains undisturbed and largely forgotten- though it is still listed in current records as a monument and is offered the protections of such.
2: That Alchera was a freezing and hostile if habitable world, such as is described in the first record.
3: That the location in which the Normandy wreckage rested was against a cliff wall, such as is described in the first record.
4: That two years after it crashed, Del Shepard- a Commander at the time and on suspension from the Alliance due to her work with Cerberus- did in fact visit the site.
5: That during the time of the visit, Liara T'soni was also present.
6: That the two of them did in fact visit the site alone initially, though others including Admiral Steven Hackett were nearby.
And so, we can conclude that the setting in which the first recording takes place is established in fact, as events occurred.
However, according to the archival documentation I found, Commander Shepard and Liara T'Soni remained at the wreckage for only a period of sixty three minutes before they returned to Hackett and those waiting to transport them to a temporary campsite. According to this new record buried in the encrypted alien signal-two entire solar years elapsed in this sixty-three minute window. Two years in which the most remarkable and nearly impossible events happened to the two bondmates.
If these records are true- and they certainly seem to begin solidly rooted in fact- then incredibly advanced levels of technology involving controlled time dilation were also involved. It would have to be artificial; any natural phenomenon capable of such time discrepancy is incapable of being so precise.
Subsequently, neither Shepard nor T'Soni appear to have retained any memory of what occurred during that two year dilation. Either they were phenomenally good actresses- not outside the realm of possibility- or somehow their memories of said events were removed. I find the latter to be the most likely case, and it was probably done by the intellect behind the time dilation itself.
It may very well be the same intellect behind the Fold data and its encryptions.
There are too many questions now to be asked, let alone answered!
I will continue to work translating, unlocking, and sorting these records and this data into a chronological order and inputting them into this log. The first entry will be the initial record I spoke of above- involving Shepard and T'soni's visit to the Normandy wreckage and what seems to have happened to them there.
Hopefully, as more and more of this information is laid to light we will have answers to these questions.
Log entry 2 ends.