I do not own Mass Effect, obviously.
My friend begged me to do a Mass Effect fan-fiction, told me that I could do anything with it, like a clean board for me to draw on, and boy was he right. Just about every character is original and I love writing this.
This tale takes place after the war against the Reapers, when the galaxy is still at war with the Geth.
For this story, I took a lot of inspiration from The Odyssey, Lord of the Rings, the Ender series and the Lonesome Dove trilogy. Let's see if you will be able to pick the influences out. I'll update every time I get a new chapter typed and ready to go. Could be next week, could be tommorow.
Happy Readings and please please please please review, I love reviews and almost live for them!
Winston Morgan looked out through the display window at the powerful image of the Horse Head Nebula. It looked like a gaseous cloud, or maybe yellow light shone on steam. More than anything it reminded him of the Northern lights he sometimes saw when he was stationed in Embanks base in Alaska. In fact, the Horse Head Nebula was pretty fart form their current system, but the telescopic image was well defined, and Morgan felt like he could reach out and touch it. If the Spectre had been in his private quarters, he would have, but the Command Deck of the Appalachian was crowded and bustling with ivilians and Alliance alike.
Morgan stepped back from the display screen and studied the next one, the one of the system they were currently residing in. HIlffirimir had been discovered only thirties years before, around the time the Reaper war ended. In the system were two hospitable planets and a few gas Giants, only six planets in total. Not a large system, but not small either. Prothean ruins had been found on one of the two planets, the one they Middle Eastern discover named Gilgamesh, after the epic poem about the Mesopotamian king. That was the planet they were headed for.
The Dreadnaught ship was only sent as a precaution. There was going to be a battle on the planet, no doubt. A large band of pirates and mercenaries had teamed and taken over the planet. There was nothing the small camp of settlers and even smaller military outpost could have done to stop the villains.
That is what Admiral Kyle Sandecker, the man at the head of the Appalachian and its human crew, was supposed to take care of. Admiral Sandecker was to send out Alliance Marines and lead the fight against the Pirates and Mercenaries. That was what the Alliance had meant to do. What Winston Morgan and his fellow Spectre Chace Verble where on Gilgamesh for something different.
A net signal had started to send off signals that no one could interpret. It wasn't a language they didn't understand, it was the signal used a receptor type so old that no one had anything that could receive the messages sent and unscramble them. Basic studies of the signal showed something almost unbelievable. The ship was Human and 170 years old, from before the humans even landed on Mars, but the single had only been received a few weeks ago, as if the old craft had just appeared.
Intrigued, the partnering Spectres volunteered to retrieve as many files as they could from the craft, and return it to scientists on the New Citadel.
Winston turned to face the XO of the Appalachian, a giant of a Krogan, and one of the four aliens on board. Apparently Admiral Sandecker and the Krogan had become good friends during the Reaper Wars. Wrex, his name was, but Morgan barely knew him. "Wrex." He said, clearly.
"Aye Spectre?" Wrex asked, turning as well, slower than a human normally would have.
"Can I get a status report from that terminal?" Morgan asked.
"Yes Spectre. On what?"
"My ship, the SR3 Eastwood. My lead engineer said he would give me an update over an hour ago, I'm just afraid something might be wrong." Morgan explained, his voice respectful and thankful towards the old Krogan.
Wrex pressed two buttons, and then looked intently at the screen. "Everything reads fine." He said in a low growl.
It was clear that Morgan had interrupted him, and had annoyed the warrior despite the respectful tones used. Winston decided it would be best to leave the Command Deck and check on his Engineering Officer. Karl Scull was very good at what he did, he was just known to take things with little urgency during times of non-crisis.
Morgan excused himself, saluted Wrex, then stepped into a blue elevator marked SJRT-445, the one towards the large hanger the Dreadnaught housed. He wanted to land on Gilgamesh before the Appalachian was detected. His duty was not to the fight, but to recovering as many files as he could from the satellite. If they were to get in undetected, Scull needed to be doing his job. Morgan was only worried that it wasn't happening.
The elevator opened, and Morgan stepped out of it and made his way down a dark empty hall to yet another elevator. The last elevator led him into the hangar bay of the Appalachian. There were a dozen cruisers or so, a few SSV's, and one frigate. Morgan made his way to the row of SSV's and stopped in front of a sleek downwards curved one that reminded him somewhat of the shape of an old Earth car, the Avanti. It was the SR3 Eastwood, Morgan's personal ship with an all human crew.
"Scull!" Morgan called as he walked down the platform to board the Eastwood. The security door opened. Then he went through the short decontamination process. Soon enough he was standing in Engineering watching two men argue rather loudly.
"I don't give a damn about your procedure, just get it done!" shouted the man on the right. He was tall, almost as tall as Morgan at 5'9. He had longish brown hair and a curved round face with two blues eyes that seemed to always hold humor, even as he yelled. It was Morgan's partner Spectre, Chace Verble.
On the left was a short man who was slightly round in the stomach area, balding horribly, but expressed his anger quite a bit better than the Spectre. It was Karl Scull, Chief of Engineering on the Eastwood. "We need to go through them anyways!"
"Then why the hell didn't you go through them two days before now?"
Scull did not have an answer. He knew of his own incompetence, but did not want to admit it. "I guess…" EH started, unsure of what he was going to say. "I guess I could cut some corners."
"You are going to cut corners." Verble ordered, then gave a surprised raise of the eyebrows as he spotted Morgan watching. Chace nodded off, to the Eastwood deck elevator. Morgan nodded as well, getting the message. They needed to speak in private. As they reached the second deck, they headed for the captain's quarters.
The two Spectres shared the room because of, ironically, Alliance regulations that did not let either one of them room up with one of the crew. The usual jokes went around about the bunk arrangement, but the one who made fun of the situation the most was Verble. Chace defiantly had more of a sense of humor than his usually hard ass partner.
"What did you want to ask me?" Morgan asked as soon as the doors slid shut behind them.
"It's about Jolene."
"What about her?" Morgan asked.
"She just got a vidmail this morning. Her mother has died. Geth attacked a colony on Antibaar where her mother was working on. Nobody made it out alive." Chace's voice became a whisper.
"Is she ok?" Morgan asked with pure concern.
Chace shook his head, "She was close to her mother, but you know…" He paused, "Jolene and I never got along, but she needs someone to talk to."
Understanding where the conversation was going, Morgan shook his head. "I'm bad at comfort speeches. You know that. Send Rainey instead."
"Rainey has already tried."
"Anderson."
"The kid? Hell, the kid is new, barely feels emotions past excitement."
Morgan shook his head again, but he knew he would have to do it. She is my friend. He told himself. Chace gave a slight smile, calm, convincing. Chace was one of the few people alive that could persuade Morgan to do anything outside of his comfort zone. He would talk to Jolene, as Chace knew he would.
"Oh, Commander…" Jolene sat up from her bed quickly as Morgan came through the bunk quarters and touched her foot lightly. "I'm sorry, I was sleeping."
"I know."
"What do you need?" Jolene asked.
"I heard about your mother." Morgan told her, trying to eject concern or sympathy into his voice. He didn't fail completely either.
"I'll be ok."
"I know."
"Then why'd you come to talk to me about it?" Jolene asked him incredulously, then added, "No, don't answer that. Verble put you up to it didn't he."
Morgan did not answer.
"So he did?" Jolene let out a snort of a laugh. "Commander, I'm ok. You don't need to check up on me."
Another voice came into the dark of the quarters. "Which Commander is that?" Asked a light young female voice.
"Morgan." Jolene answered for Winston.
"Alright." The voice died out, a bed rustled as someone turned over to face away from Jolene and Morgan.
Another interruption sounded off, this time an electronic voice. "Commander Morgan."
"Aye?" Morgan looked up.
"You need to come up to Comm room 7 and listen to this.