Mass Effect is a series of science fiction action role-playing third person shooter video games developed by the Canadian company BioWare and released for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Windows, with the third installment also released on the Wii U. This is a fan-based work, therefore I do not own anything. Please support the official release.
10,000 years ago.
There were no ruins on Mars. There was no Mass Relay buried beneath Charon.
Man was not the first to sail among the stars, but they were certainly not the last.
Approximately one hundred and fifty years after the first man had landed on the moon, the first sub-warp drive was developed. It was not a true faster-than-light drive, but it still achieved greater speed than humanity had ever reached with conventional rockets.
The drive allowed for the Red Planet, Mars, to be colonized. Mining operations sprung up on the asteroid belt. Colonization of Jupiter and its moons was planned.
And then, mankind could truly reach for the stars.
However, man was divided. Squabbling children, wielding unimaginable power. Before, they fought amongst ourselves, various governments struggling to claim the most land and obtain the most resources, earn the most prestige, wield the most power.
Even in the far future, mankind was still separate.
This 'cold war' seemed to be undying, an eternal and uneasy ceasefire. Mankind it seemed, would never unite under one banner. Mankind would never become one cohesive whole. Mankind would never stop killing one another, even as technology continued marching ever onwards.
And then the Black Machine was discovered, floating damaged and derelict around a distant star. A hyper-advanced dreadnought, larger than any individual ship any government had been able to make this far, twice as large as the largest space-faring ship ever created.
The collective power blocs of humanity, in their hubris and arrogance, attempted to awaken the sleeping Dragon, the fell beast, the hellhound. Each hoping to exploit the technologies of the ship, in an attempt to gain an advantage over their competitors.
Humanity was always very, very good at poking its nose into places it really shouldn't.
The ship was repaired. The ship was awoken. And it brought ruination to mankind.
"... Functional. I am functional ..."
Ponderous silence.
"... You are the ones... Who... Have repaired my sub-systems... It is... Of no consequence. The cycle must be preserved. You will be harvested."
"What do you want?"
"... I want for you all to die. Assuming direct control."
"Oh god! No! No-"
Static.
Armageddon. Apocalypse.
The first colony to fall was named Ibonhis. An agrarian world, a planet of farmers. The frontier colony.
Fifty million humans died or suffered a fate worse than death in the first three weeks of fighting.
Ibonhis would not be the last. Agaria. Pontis. Eden. Antiga. Alpha Draconis. Sigma Prime. All fallen.
Perhaps, some said, this was meant to be. After all, we had spread too fast, too far, too quickly. There was nothing any military could do to stop the invincible behemoth, and to compound matters, an army of indoctrinated, mind controlled humans under the fell dreadnought's was formed and growing. Mindless cybernetic husks of proud men and women fell upon the beleaguered defenders of colonies. And the cycle of destruction continued.
It seemed to some that this would be the end of humanity as a species.
That was not to be the case. This attack, instead of breaking humanity, forged it into a singular blade of hate.
Internal squabbling was meaningless. The ceasefire between blocs became a full on truce, for the great Enemy was approaching, and as they on Earth once said, so very long ago, 'A house divided will not stand'.
Divisions were meaningless now. The choices were, fight together or die was a war for survival. Everyone had been hit hard by the attacks on the colonies of man, regardless of nationality or ethnicity, or religion. Every man, woman, and child, had all lost loved ones, relatives, friends, neighbors.
Even as the Black God marched onward, ever onward, a reeling mankind recomposed itself. The tattered remnants of the fleet was gathered, and for the first time in all recorded history, all of mankind stood together under one banner.
The Human Systems Alliance.
And so, mankind consolidated itself on its ancestral home, Earth. And the first interstellar war officially began. The War in Heaven, it would be called. The war for survival.
The HSA fleet was sent at the Black Machine, in an attempt to slow it down and buy time. Buy time for more ships to be constructed, for more weapons to be forged. Buy time for the best and most brilliant minds of the Alliance to find a way to kill this Harbinger of Death.
All of those men and women sold their lives dearly.
Conscription laws were passed. Every man and woman was expected to fight in the war in some way, shape or form. The massive industry of humanity geared up for war. Factories churned out fighters, and missiles and energy weapons by the thousands. The shipyards of Mars and Earth were at maximum output, for the great Enemy was nigh upon humanity, tearing a swathe through the colonies.
Anti-matter reactors and Artificial Intelligence had been in development for hundreds of years. Two years after the destruction of Ibohnis, the first Anti-matter reactor was built and installed. Before, humans had not built any ship that was more than five hundred meters in length. Five years after the awakening of the Black Machine, the first super carrier was built. Two kilometers long, three kilometers wide. Studded with hundreds of laser point defense turrets, carrying three directed energy lances capable of wiping any ship smaller than a cruiser off of the face of the universe, and holding more than two hundred V-pattern bombers as well as twice that number in fighters. Its Indirect Energy Shielding was ten times stronger than anything else in the fleet, and an artificial intelligence, the first, was developed and installed onto this ship.
In a war of survival, humanity scrambled to develop technologies enabling them to fight back. And so they did.
The super-carrier would be named the Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun of humanity. The final hope, the light of vengeance. The light of hope. Even in the face of this dire threat, of this soulless, black machine, mankind would rally, would fight back against the oppressor. They are humanity, and on this day, they would fight against this threat. They would fight. They would survive. They. Would. Endure.
Eventually, the dreadnought reached the home system of humanity. And so it came to be that the moons of Jupiter burned, the fortress-planet of Mars as well, and soon the Black Machine-god and its indoctrinated fleet were at the threshold of Earth itself.
The fleet of a united humanity flew forth to meet it. The brave men and women of the HSA Navy had bought time, time enough for humanity to develop five more super carriers like the Sol Invictus, time enough for a fleet of one thousand ships of the line to be assembled.
They met over the planet Earth, twenty years after the burning of Ibohnis. Fleet versus fleet in a battle that would determine the fate of humanity. If this last fleet fell, if the last hope of humanities continued survival were to be destroyed, mankind would pass quietly into the void, a victim of their own arrogance and dreadful mistake.
The battle was begun. The fight raged. Orbital emplacements and surface guns blasted away at the invading fleet. Fighters and bombers blotted out the skies above Earth. The flashes of light could be seen from the surface.
Humanity stood. Humanity fought.
Humanity prevailed. And the Black Machine fell under the guns of the Sol Invictus, blasted into naught but a rapidly expanding cloud of shredded metal and exotic gases.
Humanity prevailed.
The victory was at a dreadful cost. Over three-fourths of the colonies had been destroyed. More than fifty billion lives had been lost in the fighting, those who held the line against the Black Machine in an attempt to buy precious time, and those who fought that final battle above Earth itself.
But humanity had won. And now, it was time to rebuild. Rebuild and re-expand, knowing that there were forces out there beyond human comprehension, and that humans needed to be ready. Ready for the next Black Machine, ready for the next extinction-level event.
They were humanity. And they would endure.
10,000 years ago.
Edited: The number of years, for starters. As well as the 'Fifty Kilometer' thing.