Cry of Silent Stars Chapter 1, a mass effect fanfic

Chapter 1

Cry of Silent Stars

Helltanz's notes: Now before we begin, I will inform readers now flamers can shut the hell up ahead of time if you don't like it I'm not holding a gun to your head and making you read. Furthermore if you're being a grammar nazi that's all well and good, but if you are going to be one I expect proper grammar or I expect you to keep quiet.

Now I wish I hadn't had to say that but some punks have been quite a nuisance as of late. I do hope you enjoy the fic.

Disclaimer: come on you should know the drill by now

Summary: Nearly 50000 years ago the Prothean's gave their final parting shot against their enemy before being hunted to extinction. In 2107 Humanity tested successfully the Kearny Fuchida Drive, following this humanity begins colonization of the stars. Forty one years later they discovered the Prothean Ruins on Mars and other objects of extraterrestrial origin on the red planet. It is in 2157 the First Contact War begins. The year is 2183.

Prologue

September 3, 2107

Four years after the Alliance, a rough multinational body comprised of eighteen nations with heavy interest in space travel, had approved the Deimos Project. What they were doing today was based on theories of professors Thomas Kearny and Takayoshi Fuchida. They were men who had been ridiculed for their theories nearly a hundred years ago, and now they were vindicated or were about to be.

At 12:00 Greenwich Mean Time on September 3, 2107, the Deimos test ship made its maiden voyage, jumping from Sol's Zenith jump point to the Nadir jump point in less than a minute. Humanity had acquired its first working form of Faster than Light, commonly abbreviated FtL, travel.

"A little off target, but intact...Kearny and Fuchida should have lived to see the day." The research team let out a whoop, and started to celebrate all of them rising from their seats .

An elderly man in a stiff military uniform nodded grimly, "Very good doctor, its time to get out there," At the cost of a trillion dollars there had been a lot of objection to this project, having to constantly travel to and fro to Mars's moon agitated certain members of the Alliance hierarchy.

It wasn't just the Alliance either who had bitched and moaned and kicked up shit, mused the old general, every third world control, bleeding heart, and luddite hippie had raised hell about how that money could be spent on aid money for third world countries or just not put in the space program at all. Of course those stupid luddites couldn't well raise a fuss at the facility directly with it on Mars.

Although it was called a ship, the prototype was really just the two hundred by ten meter drive core with a basic navigation program and data, and nothing else really. Little more than a needle, there was no bridge, no cargo, not even a fusion engine. More so the test ship had to be charged externally and towed into position.

The success of this project would lead to mankind colonizing the surrounding one hundred twenty light years over the next sixty years as the member nations funded the construction of their own colonization program.

These worlds would be colonized by the Alliance, a multinational body dominated by the west, which lead to some notably loud complaining but then again that was the majority of the alliance. As far as things went the Alliance was a military and economic alliance between the major nations of the West and other global powers. The major members of the Alliance were the states who had made up the EU, NATO, and the Commonwealth of Independent States, CIS, as well as a host of other nations.

The Alliance Trade Organization was the largest bloc in the world easily and effectively controlled the world economy, especially now that things like fossil fuels were a minor issue. It was thus the member nations and their populous ended up not really carrying what other nations thought, and this had shown as steadily foreign aid to non alliance nations had cut dramatically nose diving over the last fifty years, mostly this was due to anti alliance attitudes.

The Alliance Comprised more than fifty nations, and even with orbital habitats space in cities was at a premium, with the KF drive there was an opportunity for the Alliance. That kind of economic power the kind the alliance had would make the colonization funding easy enough in theory.

2148

It had been forty one years since the KF drive as it was commonly abbreviated had first been tested. It had been forty years since the first interstellar jump, to Tau Ceti, had been done confirming the slower than light Magellan probes.

The Alliance hadn't been idle over those four decades every system in four jumps of earth, and area of one hundred twenty light years in every direction had been surveyed and colonies had been established. Humanity as a whole, including those of the Clan, had colonies across more than six hundred worlds

Major General Ashcroft looked over the report on his desk, cor blimey this was a ruddy clusterfuck, it was. He thought to himself. The white haired general reached for the bottle of good stuff he kept for emergencies, and this bloody well qualified.

The Mars Expedition had been one colossal fuck up, what was it with ruddy aliens and this damned planet. The general poured him a chaser fully straight of the over proof alcohol and contemplated the last few months.

The South Pole had a cache of alien artifacts in the southern polar region of Promethei Planum. The discovery of the artifacts had caused all kind of fuss, especially when it had brought the crazies out of the wood work, not to mention brought up the matter of Cro Magnon men being experimented on aliens, which really did bring all the nuts out of the wood work.

The general stared at the alcohol, worse still now they had gone and found another alien artifact, and the only good news to come out of it was the fact that the military was keeping it totally silent. There were plans of setting up a new military base around the area that would certainly discourage further digs, still it raised the question how many damned aliens were there out there and why had they been so interested in this ruddy red rock anyway.

He downed the whole chaser in a go, and immediately regretted it giving several deep hacks as the liquid ran down his throat. Damnation, he thought angrily reaching to wipe off alcohol he'd sprayed about while he'd been trying to cough out his lungs, this was why he didn't drink regularly.

Major General Thomas Ashcroft got to his feet a sour look plastered on his face after his shot of liquid courage and opened his door, well it was time to get this over with. A man in a black N7 uniform saluted, "Major Townes you have something for me?" He inquired of the young man.

"Yes sir the object is being tentatively designated Alien Star Ship 0," He announced handing over a data pad, "and it is a large craft, sir, techs are estimating multiple kilometers across." He responded, "also its at least older than the ruins we discovered, the Dr. LaSalle is saying this thing is multiple kilometers across?"
Ashcroft really wanted to go back to get his alcohol, "Your saying its some kind of ship, and its been buried here on Mars for how many thousands of years? Ruddy hell, well go on then major get on with it."

"Ah yes sir," Townes continued, "Doctor LaSalle says its not simply a space ship but some kind of warship, and its some kind of bio organic armor, but given its size and the nature of it he wants a bigger research team."

2157

"You want some you F*king bastard come and get it then," Captain Steward bellowed to the alien ship, "Mr. Ryan all ahead full take us forward! Those bastards do not get to the Thermopylae,"
A younger man nodded, "Aye all available thrust," Responded the ensign, the Alliance Frigate accelerated dangerously as its massive fusion drives accelerated it forward towards the alien vessel.

The CIC of the Alliance Frigate was a mess and internal sensors were reading multiple hull damages, and with acceleration as it was the ship would tear itself apart in short order or rather it would have.

With a great and terrific crash Captain Steward's Frigate slammed into the Alien Warship, whose hull bent and snapped like a twig, and all went white.

It had been fifty years since the KF drive had been proven, and this was, publically at least, the first contact with an alien civilization, and they weren't friendly.

Admiral Charles Rheinhardt frowned, it had been forty nine years since humanity had started to spread across the stars. He had been selected as Major General Ashcroft's replacement with regards to Alien Space Ship 0 and the study of it. Work was slow, but Charles Rheinhardt could say with certainty this was not the bio ship's people, not for the least of which being the bio ship thought 'its kin were dead', as Ashcroft had put it one time.

Still it was possible they were Protheans the other Aliens who had had a base on Mars. Well in any event Humanity was now at war, these alien bastards were gonna pay for this mistake of theirs.

Eight years ago it had been discovered the Charon wasn't a moon at all but one of the Prothean's giant railguns, oh it wasn't a weapon though, no it was used to catapult ships across the galaxy. It was this discovery that had started the next wave of human exploration into the great unknown far beyond the one hundred twenty light year sphere of Alliance space.

The Protheans and the builders of Alien Space Ship 0 and hell other aliens had been useful in accelerating human development in more ways than one. Technology had been developed over the last decade humanity had studied the Prothean technology publically and the military had studied Alien Space Ship 0's technology quietly.

In the fifty years since the first KF drive had made its jump, in that half century humanity had spread across the stars establishing small colonies. Each of these colonies was within one to four KF jumps of a basic KF Drive making it fairly easy to render assistance and keep an eye on the colonies. All effort had gone into those colonies after Pathfinder had made its first round trip journey from Earth to New Earth.

After Pathfinder had made its first voyage a colonization program had been established post haste by the Alliance to build jumpships. The Alliance's main members, and its junior partners had worked together on the project, just like Deimos had been a joint effort and so had a number of other projects and endeavors in the past.

For the first time humanity's fleet or rather the Alliance Fleet had something other to do other than play war games with each other or the Clans, or just hunt down human pirates.

That was one issue, the Clans were a separate political entity from the Alliance. They ruled a thirty light year sphere meaning that they could drop their home guard fleet in the furthest reaches of their claimed territory at a moment's notice thanks to FtL communication. As far as things went though the Clans were on good terms with Earth, they were just more interested in being independent and acting out their survivalist and almost eugenic dreams of society.

The point was if the Clans found out about aliens and they would if they hadn't already the diplomatic corp and the Admiralty was going to ballistic trying to prevent the clans from driving headlong into the unknown.

The Mass Relay that Captain Steward and his fellow Alliance Ships had been travelling to was going to be seized, that was not in dispute. Whoever these Aliens were they were going to pay.

In the coming weeks an Alliance Battlegroup attacked Relay 314 and with the use of Swooping, a tactic utilizing the Mass Effect supplemented KF drives to jump on top of the enemy ship, no Turian warship survive. The next weeks would see human warships use the liberal use of nuclear weapons couple with the Swooping to destroy enemy ships.

Humanity had another agenda as well namely to learn more about their enemy so they deliberately took steps to salvage Turian technology whenever possible, or just the remains of ships. These remains would be towed back to Alliance space where they would be studied in depth and back engineered.

The so called First Contact War lasted a little more than four months, and was the biggest bruising to the Turian Ego in their entire history. More than that the First Contact War was the first major conflict in nearly three hundred years to occur, and only the second in one thousand years, in Citadel Space this made it quite the big deal to the Citadel.

Both sides had been getting ready for a full war, but then the Citadel had gotten involved. Humanity had struck the Turians with overwhelming force exploiting the KF drive for all it was worth and using swooping to drop nukes and hit the Turians quickly. There had even been plans in place to start nuking the Turian's worlds if it came to that, this was possible due to the fact of captured Turian computers.

Admiral Kurita Shin, descendant Admiral Kurita Takeo, stood aboard the immense space station known as the Citadel today was a good day. The Turians had readily agreed to pay heavy reparations in order to make peace with the forces of Man. This was not that surprising given that the Clans had also joined the field with their Alliance cousins once the war had become official.

Shin crossed his arms over his chest, doing his best not to look too imperiously smug at the whole situation. Humanity had for the last half century colonized the worlds around it and in that time developed industry on these worlds, this massive industry made the human war machine a very dangerous foe and coupled with the KF drive which was unknown to the Citadel races made humanity a fearful monster in the dark.

For its part with the First Contact War over Humanity had learned more of the Galaxy at large, made contact with those governments, gained valuable sources of technology, and without effort extracted hefty reparations from the willing Turians. This was indeed a good day for the Alliance and humanity as a whole.

It was the first time in three hundred years that the Citadel Races had experienced a real conflict and the Turians had lost a great deal of 'Face'. For years the Turians had been known for the skill in military affairs and they had been handily beaten by an unknown race.

Admiral Kurita bowed from the hip, "The Alliance and our Clan brothers are pleased to accept the treaty offered up by the Citadel Council. We hope that such unfortunate misunderstandings not occur again, that would be most unpleasant." He stated.

The Clans had for the most part declined to attend though Clan Grey Wolf had sent a token representative, but that was it.

For years the First Contact War would have its effects on the races of the galaxy, there would be a number of cultural and political ramifications on all sides. Humanity would be seen as the aggressors by the galactic forum, and attitude of xenophobia would develop amongst swathes of mankind's population.

2163 CE

Admiral Charles Rheinhardt looked over the report, beings of light, that was vague, and yet still enough to set off warning bells for everyone in the know. It had been fifteen years since humanity had discovered the various ruins on Mars, and they were still cataloguing stuff from the various aliens who had left ruins on the red planet.

Studies of Alien Space Ship 0 had progressed, even yielded useful stuff for the short term, though not near as much as the Prothean Ruins on Mars had. In any case the study of Alien Space Ship 0 remained classified, was likely to stay that way after they found out the thing was fucking sentient.

Beings of Light that was what that fat mole billionaire had said lead him to Klencory. That phrase was also what the ship had said their rivals had appeared to younger races as before the Unrelenting Horde had driven them all to extinction, or near enough to it.

In any event the Alliance High Command wasn't going to go after the weird mole, excuse was that it would tip the Citadel Races off. The Aliens were already annoying enough over the KF Drive, though the threat of saturation nuking anyone who attempted to steal the plans kept them in line. As it stood the Citadel had no method of stopping or defending against the KF Drive, and had no method of retaliating either and that was a useful card to play.

Of course it wasn't all hardline you piss us off we'll genocide you, far from it despite an initial bad start with the Turians things were getting better. The Turians weren't even that bad as far as things went, and with open dialogue positive relations were being formed.

The salvaged Turian technology from the First Contact War had been thoroughly studied and reverse engineered further boosting Humanity's understanding of sciences and allowing advances in other fields. Nobody told the Turians this of course, but their aggression against mankind had only made humanity stronger.

Relations with other Citadel Races were proceeding as humanity moved further into Citadel Space, or rather the Alliance did the Clans weren't doing much expanding right now, though they had mentioned something about expanding in a decade or so. Contact with the Asari was proving useful trade wise.

Even so Admiral Rheinhardt considered it potentially dangerous to leave the matter unattended, but orders were orders. For the time being the Volus Billionaire was to be left alone.

Here on Mars they would continue to study the strange and massive bio organic warship that was known as Alien Space Ship 0. After all over the last fifteen years more than a few advancements had come out of the craft or its onboard equipment.

Studies of the Alien Space Ship 0 would take some more time, but with the craft's cooperation they were getting somewhere. Amongst the more potent technologies that had been acquired from study the living warship was another form of artificial gravity, which was pretty useful

The base had expanded in the last fifteen years and now housed several research complexes each dedicated to study a number of the Alien Space Ship's technologies, and that was just on the surface. The base's underground facilities were even more in depth and built around the living warship.

So far reverse engineering their power source or offensive armaments hadn't gotten very far but stealth was something the Alliance was nearing a breakthrough on. The Alien Space Ship 0 carried fifty fighters each of which were very advanced, and seemed to powered by the same technology, and equipped with extremely advanced weapons. More than that the fighters had functioning stealth systems, and faster than light travel capabilities built in, this made them very interesting to the Alliance.

It wasn't just the fighters either the warship carried two smaller parasite craft in addition to those highly advanced fighters. Study of these other craft had only begun a few years ago so they weren't very far but at present given their size they were being studied underground.

2170

Admiral Kurita Shin of the Alliance stood aboard the Citadel. It had been five years since the Alliance had established its Embassy and ten years since the Human Biotic program had been started.

Not everything had gone well these last few years. Humanity was not going to be pushed around, that much had been made clear, and was going to be very soon. Over the last few years the tensions with the Batarians had been increasing, and things were soon to come to a head.

It was time, or so was the thinking of the Alliance, that Humanity would not tolerate crimes against its people. The Citadel needed reminding of this, as was appearance, their sheltering of the Turian Criminal Saren was intolerable, and their attempt to levy sanctions for research undertaken by a rogue nearly as bad. The Batarians would be a useful example, a tool to remind the Citadel they were venerable to mankind's KF drive. All they, the Alliance, needed was for the Batarians to do something very stupid like fire the first shot, and then well then things would become unpleasant for a short period of time.

Kurita Shin believed it was necessary to make strong points from time to time, especially after the events regarding Dr. Qian's AI research. The Citadel Council still refused to hand over Saren Arterius, and perhaps they would not for a time, but eventually the Council would be reminded that humanity was not one of the docile pets of the Council like the Volus and Elcor, and then Saren would face justice.

This day however was not the day Saren would face justice, today was yet another day of biding time and waiting for the Batarians to make another mistake.

Humanity was due to the KF drive and the sixty three years of colonization of the surrounding light years of Earth a powerful new player in galactic politics and economics. This strength in economics was helped by appropriated technology from varying sources, such as the Turians and the Protheans.

The Prothean cache form Mars had been a matter of great debate on the Citadel, and a number of Citadel Races had hoped that Humanity might share the cache of well preserved technology, but that hope had been dashed following the Saren Incident in 2165 shortly after the Human embassy on the Citadel had been established. The Alliance had flat out refused and demanded Saren's head on a platter, quite literally. The failure to comply had had long lasting consequences, though the Asari and Turians had made nice and quickly backed away from attempts to force reparations, and the Turians had in a surprise move pressed for the limits of the Treaty of Farixen be eased for the Alliance Navy.

This backpedalling by the Council however had not won Humanity many favors with some of the other Citadel races who were not apart of the Council. The Elcor and the Hanar were the major exceptions. So far relations with the Elcor and the Hanar had proceeded smoothly, especially personal relations with the latter.

The Elcor were a slow patient race who traded in finished goods. The patience and generally benign nature of the elephantine race meant they had little interest in provoking humanity.

The Hanar were extremely interested in humanity, and the Protheans. The floating jellyfish seemed to regard humans as similar to themselves due to the Prothean interference with Cro Magnon humans. Unfortunately the Hanar had little in common with regards to humans in field of trade.

It was the Elcor with whom Humanity however was interested in specifically their military hardware. The Elcor did not use small arms but did produce extremely capable war machines and that was what humanity was interested in.

Other than these two races most of the Citadel associate races were wary to outright hostile to the Human presence. It was actually surprising that relations with the Turians had improved to the point they were at now, but one shouldn't question good fortune.

Admiral Kurita was pleased by the Turians generous gesture regarding the Treaty of Farixen, not that it would have mattered considering the Alliance already had more 'dreadnoughts' than they were supposed before joining the Treaty. Human Battleships were generally larger than other Citadel races excepting the Asari. With the Turian Hierarchy moving to modify the treaty for Humanity as a gesture of goodwill it meant the number of dreadnoughts the Alliance would be 'permitted' would be only slightly smaller than the Salarians.

The Batarians had thrown an utter hissy fit at the announcement, and had not stopped complaining about it since. Rather than do the intelligent thing and build more cruisers or even consider building carriers, as humanity had been doing, they simply continued to whine. The Admiral mused that the Batarian's idiocy would only lead to their own suffering, and that he shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.

First Lord of the Admiralty Gilbert Boyle was a bit less antagonistic with regards to the dealing with the Citadel Races, but agreed Humanity needed to maintain its current policy. Boyle's policies had however met with some criticism back home. Those policies namely the joint operations with the Turian Fleet had eased tensions between the two powers over the last few years.

Ambassador Silvio was the 'official' representative to the Citadel on behalf of the Alliance, but in reality the Alliance's Ambassador task was really just to keep an ear out for things that might effect humanity. This meant most of that when he wasn't negotiating treaties for humanity he was looking into various rumors.

Chapter begin

Akuze 2177

Humanity had spent seventy years developing and colonizing the worlds immediately around their home system using the KF drive. With the reactivation of the Charon Mass Relay twenty eight years previously Humanity had gained another method of spreading amongst the stars.

The planet Akuze was in the early stages of colonization when contact had been lost with the initial pioneer team. A platoon of Alliance Marines had been ordered in to investigate and so far they'd found diddly with regards to survivors, or bodies for that matter.

When night had fallen on the planet the unit of Marines had decided to set up base camp and set a pair of its fire teams to patrol. Akuze was a verdant world with an atmosphere rich in oxygen, and with a healthy mix of carbon dioxide and nitrogen and with only a slightly longer day than Earth.

Corporal Ts'ao had been complaining that this whole mess was suspicious as hell, though not in those exact words, right before all contact with the corporal's fire team had been lost.

Sergeant Rahul had not been a happy camper over that and ordered his own squad off their own search to check on Ts'ao. Lieutenant John Sheppard had not been pleased to here Rahul had gone off on his own without waiting for him to get back into radio range.

It had been about a quarter of an hour later when the screaming and the wailing started, and then everything went ass over tit. The ground shaking had some worried about artillery, especially given the wailing sounds, but that was quickly disproved when they saw the first of the things.

"Shut up," Adam hissed gruffly, the specialist pulled the trigger to a grand total of yeah nothing, but making the thing mad. "Fuck," He snarled as the big worm like thing spat a glob of acid at them.

Luck was with them as the spray of corrosive shit didn't catch any of them. They'd already lost a fire team to the damn thing when they tried to stay up close to it. Hector and Lorita's shields had proved completely useless against the acid as it turned out, which didn't bode well at all.

Right now the drones were keeping the damn thing occupied but were really not doing anything more than pissing the damned thing off. An explosion signified one of the drones being lost, and the creature dove underground.

A minute later the thing burst out of the ground again and grabbed Corporal Toombs dragging him under as the creature retreated back under the surface of the planet.

"Fall back, we're moving to the hill," Rutkowski opened his mouth to complain about the order but Shepard cut him off, "There nothing we can do its dark and they're popping out of the ground sticking around will just get us killed." He snapped. "Now move it Rutkowski,"

The ground shook and another, or perhaps the same one, popped out of the ground and released a terrible shriek.

"Grenades now!" Shepard grunted tossing an explosive in the creature's 'face', "Suck on this ugly." The explosion detonated inside the creature's throat sending chunks flying everywhere as the grenade ripped apart the softer internal tissue.

An happiness over killing one of the things was short lived as another on showed up and gobbled down another helpless marine. The remaining base camp team still gathered together opened fire on the worm.

Shepard cursed as the remaining drones opened fire, their machine guns having little effect on the subterranean creature. A number of Marines assault rifles redlined, overheated, from the sustained firing. The lack of rocket drones was really coming to bite them in the ass. The lieutenant primed another grenade and tossed at the worm, it latched on blew a hole in the side of the creature, but that really just slowed it down.

PFC Gonzales got taken down next while moving to toss a grenade, the explosive detonated with minimal effect. She got skewered by one of the creature's claws.

Marine Gunner Stephenson tossed a grenade like a discus directly in front of the thing, "Get the hell clear it's a cobalt pack," He snapped. The remains of the unit dove for cover as the micro nuke went hot frying the already injured creature.

The miniature sun dimmed and the unit pulled back, not that there was much left of the unit. Of the fifty men dispatched to investigate two fire teams had been dispatched to do extended patrols of the area and probably were already dead. When the creature's had attacked the camp the unit had gotten split up.

Right now the remains of first squad was hiking up the hill to try and make contact via radio contact with any survivors. The staccato burst of machine gun fire erupted in the distance and there was another creature roar as group from second squad came rushing out of the outcropping of trees.

Half a dozen surviving Marines from a mixture of the first and fifth fire teams opened up on the creature as it made itself known. The rest of the surviving Marines followed up covering the retreating marines from second squad.

Corpsman Davies screamed as another of the monsters burst out of the ground and skewered him with one of its claw. Sheppard and two Marines turned and lobbed grenades at the beast, something they weren't gonna be able to keep up.

The explosives proved in any case to be effective if the horrific shrieks were any indication as the Corpsman's too still body dropped back to the ground along with the equally still form of the big worm like thing.

Sheppard panted nearly collapsing against an old gnarled tree, the worms had attacked shortly after dusk and everyone had been running effectively the whole. There were just too many and they too damned hard to kill for the Marines to stand and fight with their limited numbers and light equipment.

Most the marines had been outfitted with standard Alliance light and medium armor, the only ones with heavy armor had been one of the sergeants, and Sheppard himself. The first instances of power armor had been developed in the early twenty first Century, though kinetic barriers were a fairly recent addition. In this regard human power armor had mainly relied on advanced composite materials to provide protection. The light material in light and medium weight power armor did well to protect against small arms fire, but the acid and the creature's claws didn't seem to be effected. Even Shepard's heavy armor wasn't doing so well, but the thicker plates were still intact to an extent. The lieutenant rolled to the side as another one of the worms attacked, it was like the damn things were tracking the marines, but that had to be total bullshit right?

He primed the grenade deciding to see how the bastard thing liked a taste of some of the Alliance incendiary grenades. The disc shaped explosive deployed its fins to stabilize its flight. Shepard didn't bother waiting and set off in a run, these things were just too damn tough to stay and fight without proper equipment, and as it was he was running out of grenades.

Plan, if the idea could be called that, was to get to higher ground, specifically the rocky hills about three klicks through the woods north by west, in the event of separation. That had been the plan at least, and that was what Shepard was trying for right now. A burst of static cut through his head set, "PFC ~ at the ~vous" A voice announced through the static. "fucking ~stards are still ~ing,"

While relieving that some of the marines had made it, the fact they seemed to be still under attack by the worms didn't do him any good at all. Getting through the woods was a task in and of itself at the best of time. Akuze was classed by the Citadel as a Garden world, much like Earth and a number of the worlds near the human homeworld that had been colonized over the last seventy years by the KF drive.

The Protheans, the race effectively venerated by the Citadel races, had been mucking about on Earth back during the cave man days. It wasn't really known what they had been doing, but perhaps they had had something to do with the abundance of habitable worlds near Earth.

John kept an eye on his armor's heads up display, HUD, not that it was doing that much good in the present situation. Crossing three kilometers of treacherous terrain in the dead of night while under attack by an unknown number of hostile aliens… correction giant hostile aliens… this was just great. Lieutenant Shepard kept moving a grip on his assault rifle which was at this point little more than a coping message considering how little of an effect it had on the creatures.

Akuze was a heavily forested world, covered in millions of alien trees with an environment well suited to Earth based plant life. The planet was well suited for agricultural development and human settlement or at least that had been the thought prior to this mess.

Akuze's hills were actually a collection of raises in terrain covered by grass, oddly though initial looks said they probably were over some kind of set of caves possibly the remains of lava flow tunnels. They were supposedly as tough as alliance ferrocrete though, meaning these burrowing worms were not likely to be able to get to them on the hills. That was the hope at least, if they could hold out till morning they could wait for the arrival of their extraction team. The team hadn't expected the need for fire support, and the briefing had never mentioned the possibility of needing to be extracted under fire.

He had heard the screeches as he'd made his approach up the incline that was the hill, crouching behind another alien tree with the weird scale like bark, to take a look up ahead. He saw the swaying form of one of the beasts as it soaked up a barrage of assault rifle fire from probably six to eight marines. There was a strange humming noise and a Rover came careening off the hill, "Yee haw, you fucking bug, how d'you like them apples." Had this been any other situation John would have slapped himself, Bo was an idiot but in all surprise that had actually worked.

The M19 Rover Scout vehicle had slammed into the worm with a great deal of force. The intentional crash had messed up the heavy duty armored front of the car but creature was an even worse mess.

"Ah schucks lieutenant its done and deader than roadkill," Bo drawled kicking the bloody and too still form of the worm as Shepard headed up. "You see ain't nothing you can't deal with the-" that was as far as he got before he got gobbled up by the resurgent worm.

John cursed and he and the remains of the Marine team opened fire, badly injured the worm staggered under the assault of infantry kinetic energy weapons. As soon as that one died another showed up to attack the marines.

The remaining supply of grenades dwindled as more men and women died, but the second worm went down. The ground shook and a tree was uprooted as another of the beasts leaped out the ground and slithered up the hill. The fucking thing was huge, but while it was big it was also reckless. Shepard prepped his grenade, one of two he only had left, at the same time a claw came round and split his helmet.

Blood leaked down into one eye and the grenade blew underneath the third creature, and everything exploded. The ground around them collapsed about them and the 'hill' under their feat gave way. Shepard's armor bombarded him with warnings.

Then the ground was back, and back with a vengeance he grunted as the air left his lungs when he slammed into the ground. "Volcanic caves my balls," He spat after stumbling to grab his assault rifle. His armor was fucked up and breached in at least a dozen different places, and that was just the start of the warnings, especially given the health read outs. As it stood at least half those breaches had kept on going and torn him up as well as his armor.

The 'tunnels' weren't tunnels at all and Shepard like every Alliance soldier, citizen or even a Citadel Race member recognized the signs of a Prothean lab… on that was powered. That hadn't happened since they, the human race, had found the Lab at Mars... and well the Citadel were lucky if they found working Prothean trinkets much less a fully functional lab.

A million thoughts ran through his head, were the worm things the defenses for the facility, being one of them. A light sparked to his right. "Greetings I am Dante the Virtual Intelligence for this laboratory." Announced the humanoid holographically projected image.

Shepard stumbled hitting a table attached to a wall upon which were set a number of alien devices. "What is this place,"
"A place of study,"
He straightened up not an easy task at present, "of what, those things?"
"No, of those who we call the Reapers, and of you."
The grip he had on his assault rifle tightened, as he took his bleeding hand away from the table not noticing one of the devices had activated. "Me what does that mean?" He demanded.

"Not of you, but your species." Answered the VI, "You are the last, the successors of both us and the others."

"Successors of what?" He snapped back stumbling into another rack of tools, "

General Lyon looked at the ICU suite, "He going to be all right then corpsman?" He asked though a hint of steel was under the man's voice.

"He's stable, but the next seventy two hours will tell us for certain." The man stated stripping off his surgeon's cap, "if he does survive his unit is dead, slaughtered by those things," He remarked, "I'm concerned about the psychological damage that could result, and that doesn't take into account the anomalous readings its really strange he doesn't have implants,"
"Implants?" The general responded, "I'm not sure I follow you, I know Shepard's file states he's further along the advancement path but he isn't Clanner, or a cyborg,"
The doctor shook his head, "Not that he's a biotic, the nodes are benign I'm surprised he wasn't apart of the training regimens, no one noticed?"

"No he grew up on Earth, no data exists on his parents, they must have missed him," He responded, "There was no evidence mentioned in his file about it, you'd think he would have used it?"
The corpsman shook his head, "That's just it I think he was using it, during the fight, generating a mass effect field make himself faster and stronger," He paused, "From the reports were dying left and right and those things were hard to kill its lucky he survived in his state."

The doors opened with pneumatic hiss, "How is our dutiful hero?" Remarked the newest entrant, "House Davion is quite pleased," He announced. "In fact all the houses all quite pleased you know?"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Growled the general, if that statement had come from anyone else he'd have thought there was a risk of something going afoul.

The newcomer smirked, "You haven't seen the news have you general," He stated smugly, "Its all over the casts Lieutenant Shepard and the lost marines of Akuze, the public loves a hero. Fighting on a mysterious world against the alien monsters, I'd be surprised if they didn't make a movie, everyone is happy. The public has a hero and there is a new source of Prothean technology for us to study, and possible answers for our questions."
"Shut up Blake." Lyon snapped angrily at the bureaucrat.

Through all this Shepard slept under heavy anesthesia while the Alliance's military medicine tended to the hundreds of scratches and damages to his body.

No Alliance warship noted the shift in space as a two kilometer warship arrived, no one saw the ship. No one detected it as picked up the unsealed electronic transmissions or just sat there. Things had changed the circle of extinction had broken.

All living things with sentient thought had their own opinions, but all sentient life tended to group together for survival and the benefits which were offered by living together.

In the mean time Blake was busy rattling on about how thoroughly pleased the Great Houses of Earth were, and more importantly he continued what a positively wonderful discovery this was. "Imagine it a working Prothean Virtual Intelligence we can rub this in the Citadel's face for the next half century at the very least, yes I definitely see Akuze as a major human fortress now." He stated with glee, "this world's development will be accelerated imagine it something like the Inner Sphere, it will be like New Earth was thirty or forty years ago in a few or maybe dozen months, think of it heavy development is inevitable."

General Lyon desperately restrained himself from slugging the man, consoling himself it could have been worse.

Chapter conclusion

Helltanz's notes: As far as things go this story is fairly AU for stuff to be announced for ME 2 and the novels, such as for the Geth and other stuff.

If your actually curious as to the Alliance's main members its as follows, note all members of the NPT, effectively it isn't Mega NATO IN SPACE!! That is not the intention seeing as its more of unified military command structure but at the same time big time economic body.

Primary Members:

United States, Russian Federation, Australia, Great Britain, France, China, Germany, Japan, India, Ukraine, Unified Korea, Brazil, Sweden, Ireland, Finland, Malta, Cyprus, Kazakhstan, Belgium, Turkey, Romania, Luxembourg, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Norway, Estonia, Argentina, South Africa, Spain, Bulgaria, Philippines, Croatia, Albania, Lithuania, Portugal, Poland, Iceland, Italy, Slovakia, Slovenia, Latvia, Denmark, Egypt, Turkmenistan, Armenia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Uzbekistan, and anybody apart of the EU, CIS or NATO I forgot, plus a couple others I forgot.