5/1/2154 Earth, Geosynchronous orbit over London

The entire 1st alliance fleet had formed up around a sphere of energy that had appeared out of nowhere and had been steadily growing for the last 6 months.

Scientists around the world and from all over the systems alliance territory had been scrambling to come up with answers for the weary population. The energy levels that this ball was giving off were truly staggering to say the least and still rising, it had passed the energy being given off by the sun several weeks ago.

Though many theories had been given by the scientific minds of humanity, the best answer given from the readings that had been painstakingly retrieved from the energy sphere was that it was a dimensional rift as bazar as it sounded. This answer was given based on the fact that any probe sent had its chronometers go haywire whenever it approached the sphere's event horizon, while all other data streams remain intact, until the probe itself was destroyed.

'So, explain it to me again, how exactly do you think this rift thingy was formed?" Lt Steven Hackett asked one of the many scientists that were aboard the ship he was serving on. They were sitting in the mess off duty; their shifts wouldn't start for another few minutes, so they had time to chat.

The scientist looked up to see who had asked, and promptly rolled his eyes 'for the fifth time now lieutenant, it's like this, there are two massive yet opposite ends of the spectrum sets of energy colliding with one another. The energy released is creating millions of micro singularities which then collide with one another, the massive amount of gravitational friction which is caused has torn time space itself leaving us with this.'

Lieutenant Hackett was by no means slow or an idiot, it was something about that last sentence that bothered him, 'you keep saying that "time space", what do you mean, that whatever is coming through, if anything is coming through, it could be from anywhere or is it anywhen?'

The scientist gave Hackett a devilish grin 'exciting isn't it, we are dealing with an entity that if capable of creating this chronoshpere whether deliberately or not, they would be the single most advanced form of life that we have ever encountered, even more than the Protheans.'

'Personally I'm just glad that all that energy is contained by its own self sustained mass effect field, hell it would have burned earth to a cinder if that weren't the case.' Hackett said as he rose from the table, 'well it's time for me to get to my post, shouldn't you be doing the same?'

The scientist leaned back in his chair and smiled 'aw come on Lt it's been months, so what if I'm a few seconds late to my desk, what's the worst that could hap-'

A loud and panicked voice sounded over the ships intercom cutting him off;

"Hey! Somebody! The energy levels from the sphere have just spiked off the charts if anything's going to happen it's gonna happen now!"

Hackett glared at the scientist, 'there should be a death penalty for people who tempt fate like that, damn it man, and I thought scientists were supposed to be smart!'

The scientist paled and raced off to the nearest terminal presumably to try to make sense of the readings, or in an attempt to save face.

Hackett instead headed for the bridge, and a short walk later arrived as the captain did and after a brief salute they both walked onto the bridge.

Captain Liam Ford was a tall, no nonsense kind of guy, he knew the work and took his job as captain and a protector of earth very seriously. Despite being a little rough around the edges his men loved him, he always took the time to listen to their opinions and rarely acted without premeditating his next move.

'Alright bring the ship up to full combat readiness, if this is the moment we've all been waiting for I'd rather not get caught with our pants down' the captain said as he peered through the forward view port to where the sphere, rift, dimensional portal whatever, he'd heard so many different terms for whatever it was it didn't matter because whatever it was, was rapidly changing colour, flickering from red to blue and back again.

Suddenly it turned to the most intensive bright white they had ever seen before collapsing into itself, the ships radar officer glanced back to the captain for a moment and reported 'sir the energy levels are dropping rappid- detecting an EMP!'

The captain pressed the intercom 'Brace for EM blast!'

While the ships of the alliance fleets were shielded from electromagnetic pulses, the sheer power that was being blasted at them from this sphere would overwhelm the ships meagre defences and at least temporarily leave them dead in the water. While in the free fall of space, a ship without its mass effect generators, its drive cores or any other means of managing the internal gravity and external inertia, it can be at best rather disorientating, at worst a disaster.

As the entire 1st fleet went dark to the EM blast and Captain Ford found himself floating above his flight officer, he thought back to the briefs he'd received from the strategists in the alliance military intelligence committee, the use of this device to broker an invasion from the sphere seems unlikely, they had said, taking months to create a beachhead while giving us plenty of time to secure it would be a colossal waste of energy and any invading force would be like fish in a barrel with our fleet standing by waiting for them to attack, no an invasion from this rift is unlikely.

Well score one for military intelligence, looking out the view port Captain Ford noted the entire 1st fleet floating in free fall, all those defences that the alliance had set up gone dark, taken out in a single moment and the likely hood of a successful invasion from the rift increasing by the second.

'Get me backups online this instant I want this ship operational Lieutenant, earth is sitting there defenceless' Captain Ford barked down to the officer in charge of the CIC.

Precious moments later power was restored to the vessel and as the sensors slowly came to life it became clear that they had drifted closest in the fleet to the rift, or rather where the rift had been.

Gone was the massive energy sphere and in its place was what looked to be a battle scared ship.

'Wes are you seeing what I'm seeing?' Captain Ford asked the radar officer, who turned to the captain, 'yeah the rifts gone, rather anticlimactic if you ask me' and then turned back to his screen.

'I meant that ship out there in its place' Captain Ford clarified, and Wes looked up at the captain again with a beguiled look on his face, 'what ship?' he asked before following the captains pointed finger out the view port to the ship he was referring to.

'Oh that ship' Wes stated rather stupidly before looking back at his blank screen, before realising that the screen was showing the rest of the fleet, just not the newcomer. He then looked out the view port again and then back to his screen, after repeating this several times with rapidly increasing intervals he leapt to his feet exclaiming 'WHAT THE HELL!'

'I'll take that as a no' the captain said, 'alright we'll have to rely on visual scanning, we're the closest ship in the fleet to that vessel so I want us on broadcast, let the rest of the fleet get the Intel at the same pace as us.'

As the ships observation suit came online several officers and members of the science crew who were able to get feeds started speaking over each other making observations on the new vessel.

Things like unknown design, and completely invisible to all other scanning methods started to fill the coms above earth while several satellites where beaming all news down planet side, there was no way this was going to remain a secret. The whole world was already aware of the sphere, hard to keep the brightest object in the sky quite, but the fact that a ship had come through was going to set conspiracy theorists off like nobody's business.

'Well it's a warship, that's for certain, bit bigger than one of our standard frigates, though not as big as a cruiser' Lt Hackett said making note of its size. Captain Ford turned to him 'Call it a destroyer then, but what makes you so certain that it's a warship?' he asked.

'There look' he indicated several points along the vessels wing 'those resemble our guardian laser systems, but more advanced and look here, those are missile tubes and there are several hatches that could conceal even more weapons.' The ship was dead in the water same as the fleet was only moments before, but it was turning on its axis and more of the ship was coming into view.

There was a long melted and still glowing line along the starboard side of the ship, wherever it came from it did not leave on friendly terms that was for sure. The vessel turned some more, and now had its entire side illuminated.

Lt Hackett's eyes widened in shock 'wait is that…' he trailed off as the others in the bridge peered past him, 'yep' was all the flight officer could reply. 'Well I'll be God damned, she's flying under alliance colours!'

The whole world went silent at that. The Captain thought for a moment before saying 'ok so ruling out the possibility that this is all some form of very elaborate hoax what does that leave us?' He looked around before continuing, 'the science crews aboard this ship say that the rift was breaching time and space itself, and that ship is clearly more advanced than our current understanding and of a make that we've never seen before, so I'm gonna say what we're all thinking and get it out the way so we can move on to what is important.'

The captain took a breath before acknowledging the theory that would without a doubt be one of the most significant events in history had in fact happened. 'The vessel before us has come through the rift from the future, now that that's out of the way, there is a wealth of information over there, and hell even if I'm wrong about time travel, I still want to know why we can't get any sensor readings on that ship now let's get to it, helmsman bring us alongside that ship.' With that the ship came to life and began to slide closer.

The coms officer's startled cry gave pause to the sudden sense of purpose. 'Sir, bogy is hailing us! It's coming in on every alliance channel!'

'Put it on screen' Captain Ford spoke immediately, it was time to see who he was dealing with.

'Ah hello? This is Flight Lieutenant Jeffry Moreau of the Normandy, We took a hit from a Reaper Dreadnaught which forced us into the crucible right as it was powering up to fire, the Normandy is dead in the water, sensor suit is offline and backup power systems are failing to respond, both the CO and the XO are on board and critically wounded, repeat Commander Shepard and Lt Commander Williams are on board and Critically wounded, we need immediate medivac.'

'AN' This is my first published work any feedback on ways to improve my work would be much appreciated