What happens after Mass effect 3.
With the Reapers no longer an issue in the galaxy and most of the rogue sects of anti species groups defeated the galaxy seemed like a much safer place but sadly that wasn't the case. New alliances were being formed right under everyone's noses without them even realizing it. These alliances were being formed to finish what the Reapers had started believing in their ideology. One man and a ship would stand in their way, but would that be enough to stop the wheels of their plan that was already set in motion?
On a backwater planet that hadn't been colonized yet due to how far out it was in the galaxy, one man continued his efforts to rebuild a ship he had found floating in dead space and had landed it on the planet he was currently on. He had been there for several years repairing the ship so it would be space worthy again. He was in his small tree hut he had built when first arriving on the planet when he noticed a ship entering the atmosphere and crashing nearby.
"Gilliam what is the status of that ship?" The man said walking to the window with a plate of some creatures cooked meat he was eating. "It doesn't match anything in my database but my scans indicate there is life onboard." The Ai said popping up from a holoprojector on a nearby desk. "Well if they are alive they won't be for long if they are hurt." The man said putting the plate down and grabbing a bow and a bag and running out the door.
The man reached the ship which seemed to be intact for the most part. It looked like it had some hull ruptures that could be clearly seen from the outside. The man noticed some of the crew walking around outside inspecting the ship. "Gilliam run a high intensity scan of their ship." The man said over a communication device on his watch. "Are you sure that is a good idea? If you don't mind them knowing something is here with them, then it shouldn't be a problem." The Ai responded. "They already know they aren't alone by the way they are setting up armed guards and setting up a perimeter." The man said crouching down behind some leafs on the tree branch he was hiding on.
A bright orange wave swept over the ship and surrounding area and made a loud low toned noise when it passed over. The guards pointed their guns at the sky and then frantically began looking around to find the source of the scan. "Did you get everything?" The man asked. "Yes there is no need to do another." The Ai responded. "Do it again just in case." The man replied. Another wave passed over emitting the same noise causing more of the crew to emerge from the ship with orange devices on their arms trying to pinpoint the origin of the scan but were unsuccessful. "Gilliam I am going to be spending the night out here with our guests to watch them." The man said over his watch and then shutting it off to keep the Ai from arguing with him.
Dusk fell quickly on the makeshift camp site the crew had made just outside the hatch with torches surrounding the campsite to try and keep the local wildlife away. The man had switched positions multiple times to keep from being discovered and was now sitting near the nose of the ship high in a tree top watching closely at who was entering and exiting the ship. The crew, which was mostly comprised of humans but had a few aliens among them, kept a constant rotation of people. He counted forty crew members, give or take a few. He had no intention of attacking them but something kept bothering him about the name of the ship, which was mandy with a hole blown into the beginning of the name of the ship, like he had seen that name somewhere.
As night began to fall all of the nocturnal hunters in the area started waking up and weren't happy about the guests that had landed nearby. The crew, obviously worried about the wildlife, doubled the guard and posted people near the new sky lights in the ship. The bushes started to rattle with some of the wild life finding their prey. The crew didn't realize that on the opposite side of the ship the hunting party had decided to climb over the ship and catch the crew off guard. "Let's see if those stars are there then that means we are in slasher territory, which is not good." The man said notching a rather large arrow in his bow.
The first slasher had climbed its way onto the ship and was about to pounce on a crew member from above. When the slasher jumped to strike at its prey the guard took notice but it was too late for him to react and froze. As the slasher fell towards its next meal a massive bolt pierced the mid section and had enough force to completely change the slasher's path. It darted to the side as if a car had hit it and it was impaled on the side of the ship. The slasher was still alive and not at all pleased with the rod having rearranged its internal organs and was desperately trying to pull itself loose. The bolt made a clicking noise and spikes jutted out from the slasher killing it instantly.
The other slashers backed away from their pray slowly but not before three more massive bolts were fired, seemingly all at the same time, killing more slashers that thought taking advantage of the guards momentary lapse in guarding as a moment of weakness and were killed upon entering the light of the torches. The trifecta of bolts clicking and splattering more slashers got the guards to turn around and notice the new corpses. The bushes could still be heard rustling with more slashers trying to find an angle on their prey when a creature roared in the distance. The slashers heard and whimpered away quickly upon hearing the noise.
Two alien females emerged from the ship, one being blue in color and another in a purple suit with reversed hinged legs, to see what had penetrated the ship's hull. Apparently the bolt that shit the ship went far enough in that the one with the purple suit almost got hit with it when it pierced the side. They didn't look too happy and began examining the bolts in the slashers.
"What are those things?" The one in the suit asked. "The creatures or the bolts?" The blue one replied sarcastically. "Someone or something is watching us. These bolts are made with a mass altering tungsten. When it hits its target it adds mass to the bolt for a heavier hit without needing a large device to fire it." The girl in the suit said running her orange wrist device over the bolt to scan it. As she conducted a more thorough scan the slashers tail began to move again. Suddenly there was a wind breaking sound. It caught the girl in the suit off guard causing her to fall back on the ground. The blue girl quickly spun around and had some kind of blue aura around her. The girl in the suit didn't say anything but just pointed to the slashers tail that was trying to move but had been ran thru with four bolts that had three strings each tying them to the ground. "Someone is watching us!" The blue girl said. "No they aren't watching us, they are protecting us." The girl in the suit replied getting up off the ground.
The man continued to watch and make sure another slasher didn't try the same trick. He couldn't believe how careless he had been to just assume he had killed it, he knew better from previous run ins with slashers to know. Suddenly there was a bullet that hit the branch next to his head. He didn't move but instead waited for the wind to blow and darted to the tree to his right. He looked closely at the guards to see who could have taken the shot but it didn't look like anyone had so he chocked it up to a miss fire when a stinging sensation went across his arm causing him to lose his grip and making him fall from the tree. He hit the ground had but not before he had taken out a few branches.
After he got the breath back in his lungs he got up and began to run to see if he could find whoever was shooting at him. He hid in a bush and noticed something moving on the ridge just above the ship. After covering himself in mud and leaves he proceeded carefully to make his way around the ship and up the ridge.
Once he had made his way up the ridge he found a rather large alien with a rifle looking over the tree tops looking for its target. He snuck up on the alien and drew a crude dagger from his bag. He moved quickly and put the dagger on the neck of the alien opposite of himself just in case he tried to roll away.
"I give you credit, no one has ever snuck up on me before." The alien said taking his hand off the rifle's trigger. "I don't intend on harming you or your crew. Just get back to your ship, it's not safe outside at night. In the morning if you are all still alive I will meet with you and your crew at dawn in your camp. If you do not do this I will leave and the slashers are the least of your worried tonight. Their blood will only attract the larger predators and your weapons won't be enough to save you." The man said and then disappeared before the alien could get a good look at him.
The alien in the blue armor went down to the two girls talking about the mysterious person watching over them. As the man went back to a new perch he could see them talking and then the crew all went inside for the night as instructed.
The night went on and the crew didn't sleep much with all the noises and whatever loud creature kept roaring throughout the night. Every so often the crew could hear one of the large bolts hitting some poor creature with a loud thud and then everything went quiet. Dawn came and the daytime creatures could be heard waking up and getting on with their day. The crew popped open the door and someone peeked their rifle scope out.
The man noticed and turned around after examining a creature's corpse. "It's safe now." The man said loud enough to be heard by whoever was behind the door. The large alien in the blue suit was the first to emerge from the ship, then the girl in the purple suit, then the blue alien girl and so on until most of the crew was outside.
The crew of the downed ship looked over the man who had been protecting the ship from the outside all night. He stood a little over six foot tall had messy brown hair, blue eyes and was fairly well built but was more of a result of him living on a backwater planet fighting the local wildlife. He was wearing a pair of torn up blue jeans with a brown button down shirt that had long since had any buttons on it. The simple wooden bow was slung over his shoulder along with a very worn out backpack. The backpack contained the bolts he had been firing all night and only a few could be seen remaining peeking out from the top of the backpack.
"So you're the one who's been watching over us, the only thing I care about knowing is why?" The larger alien with the blue armor asked. "Being alone on a backwater planet tends to make you want friends." The man said. "What is your name?" The blue female alien asked. "Jack Morgan from what I can remember. It's been a long time since anyone has used that name though. And before you ask no I don't have a colony or anyone else here. I crashed here a few years ago and began repairs on my ship." Jack told the curious crew. They all introduced themselves. The blue female was Liara T-soni, the one with the purple environment suit was Tali, and the larger blue armored alien was Garrus. After they introduced themselves Jack sat down near the fire that was almost out to talk with the crew and answer some questions.
Chapter 1How it all Started
The crew wanted to know where Jacks ship was and how he even got to the planet. They said they needed to head home as soon as possible so Jack began the long process of explaining the current situation and the past of how he ended up marooned on the planet.
He was from a colony on Mars, he was a brilliant scientist but an even greater engineer sent to Mars to conduct tests and repairs on the station. He was experimenting with a faster than light travel system and was making great progress. During the final test something went horribly wrong and the field for the FTL exploded and sent Jack and his lab onto the backwater planet. The test was supposed to ensure supplies that went to Earth and Mars would take seconds instead of months. Jack believes sabotage was the cause of the explosion but with him being on a different planet and what he believed now a different time.
He told them of how when he exited the FTL field he was originally floating in space inside a sealed lab. He floated for a few days before he saw a derelict ship floating in the distance. He tried hailing the ship but never got a response. He used a sealed radiation suit to make a space walk to the ship when it came within range. He almost died during the walk from having trouble getting the hangar door open.
Jack made his way into the ship calling out for anyone who might be aboard but never got a response. This was very disheartening but it was only the beginning. As he walked thru the ship he found dead bodies laying on the floor as if something all at one time had killed them. He found the ship life support and found that there had been a tear in the ship's hull that had pulled all the air out of the ship causing the crew to die. There had also been a virus that kept the ship from locking the bulkheads to isolate the breech.
Jack ridded the computer of its virus and the ship seemed to come alive. Drones were sent out to repair the breech and life support turned back on allowing him to retire the radiation suit. Once the repairs had been down he headed for the planet he was now stuck on. During the landing the main engines had run out of fuel and the mid engines on fumes landed the ship carefully in a valley between mountains to begin repairing and running diagnostics on the ship.
That's when Jack found out that the ship he had found abandoned was a warship. Flipping through pages and pages of intel on the ships computer to find out more about the ship he was now the new owner of, it was the largest space faring warship ever constructed. The largest space-faring warship ever constructed by the Terrans, the GTVA Colossus was the result of twenty years of joint effort from dozens of contractors from across the Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance. Logging in with a length of just over six kilometers, this behemoth was equipped with over eighty weapon turrets, in addition to over 240 combat spacecraft. It required a crew of 30,000 to operate, 10,000 at a minimum just to keep systems running.
Jack had stumbled upon a galactic treasure and was sure to use it to help everyone he could. With his plan in motion frustration grew quickly. For starters the fuel was from a planet too far away to get fuel from so he had to retro fit the engines to run of a technology he had developed a few months before his work on the FTL system. It was a dark matter engine. It used small amounts of dark matter to produce a massive amount of thrust the ratio of fuel to thrust based off his new platform was close to 1 unit of fuel to be able to produce 10 to the 5000th power worth of thrust. Once all the engines had been retrofitted he thought he was home free but was sadly mistaken. The ships weapon systems were offline and the generator for them was completely destroyed.
Jack also ran into a problem getting the ships massive turbines to turn over to started running. The turbines worked a lot like a normal combustion engine, intake dark matter and expelling thrust to move the ship, but without a starter for the turbines to begin spinning they would stay dead and cold. The ships comm. relay had also been destroyed, making communication impossible. So until he figured out a way to remedy starting the engines and fixing the weapon systems he wasn't going anywhere.
Jack also informed the crew he knew about the Reaper threat from the Alliance and Citadel database. This raised questions of how he was able to pull information but couldn't contact anyone. He explained that he had built an Ai to help with the process and coordinate the drones. The Ai had sent a satellite up in orbit and was able to use a type of electromagnetic plasma infused pulse to pull massive amounts of data from computer systems with a lot of traffic.
The crew was growing suspicious of their guardian angel but he assured them he hadn't talked to anyone and regrets not being able to help in the fighting. He seemed very sincere in this and the crew felt sorry for someone to have a massive behemoth of a war ship, just to watch the Reapers invade and not be able to help in any way. He also told them had he been able to even get the engines running he would have used the warship as a transport for refugees.
Everyone could tell he was furious at himself, by the way he spoke, for not helping and without missing a step vowed to help everyone affected by the invasion as a way to atone for sitting by and not being able to help. The crew was won over by this and agreed to help in any way possible.
Chapter 2 Dark Matter
Jack showed the crew the new ship. The only one not happy with the sudden change of residence was Joker the Normandy's pilot. Jack reassured Joker that he would love the Colossus once it got space worthy again. Joker didn't seem to agree.
Jack and the crew boarded the Colossus and they couldn't believe the massive scope of the ship. They knew it was a large warship but it was bigger than the Destiny's Ascension! That was a feet within itself. The crew began working immediately over the next few days trying to get the ship operational. Jack and Tali worked closely together to bring the ships weapons and engines back online. One day in the lab they discovered a lot more than just how to fix some of the systems.
"I wonder if we could start he engines with a small controlled explosion to jump start the engines?" Tali said looking over blueprints of Jack's retrofit. "I thought that too but it would have to be a circular explosion to get the engines to spin." Jack said typing the scenario into the computer which gave an error showing the engines along with most of the ship exploding. "Well that wasn't pleasant." Tali said disappointed with the outcome. "Yea I like my ship in one piece." Jack said laughing a little. "You seem happy for someone who is stuck with a problem." Tali said curious at how he kept such a positive attitude. "I love working on problems with no logical outcome because it forces you to think outside the box." Jack said walking over to the table where Tali was standing looking at the blueprints.
"What does this line go to here?" Tali asked showing the line to Jack. "Well those are for the dark matter to feed the engines in a non dark matter rich environment. It's a fuel line to the gas tanks basically." Jack said standing straight up and rubbing his head. "Well after you finished hooking everything up did you open them all back up? Maybe the reason they aren't starting is because they don't have fuel?" Tali asked thinking surely he couldn't have done something so simple. "Of course I opened the…" Jack said trailing off as he typed something into the computer only to realize he hadn't been checking the lines from the shut off to the engines. The sensor past the shut off showed no fuel in the lines. "Tali don't ever forget that when you retrofit an engine in a giant warship to go back to the fuel shut off valve and open it back up." Jack said grabbing a large wrench and heading off to the engine bay.
Tali and Jack reached the engine bay and Tali noticed something a little off about the compartment where the engines were sealed. She noticed a lot of spare parts and tools floating around in the chamber. Jack was suiting up in some kind of environment suit when she turned around to ask him about what was happening but she started to put the pieces together by herself. "So the room is an anti-gravity chamber due to the engines creating a lot of heat right?" Tali said proudly. "Nope, It's because all the stuff for the engines is heavy and I'm too lazy to build machines to lift everything. It was easy creating an anti-gravity chamber for it instead." Jack informed he slightly impressed that she was thinking outside the box.
Jack instructed Tali to watch the fuel read out for each engine and to let him know when every engine was getting the correct amount of fuel. Too much and they would implode, too much and they would explode. Jack started to work on the valve slowly turning the main feed on and then going one by one to each engine feed valve to slowly open it up to get the correct pressure.
The slow task was finally coming to a close when something went horribly wrong. "Jack engine eight's pressure just sky rocketed! I don't know what to do!" Tali yelled through the intercom panicking. "It's alright Tali. I will just go and close the valve a little and it should fix the problem." Jack said calmly and headed over to engine eight that was right below him. Jack went to the valve and slowly started to close it off.
As he was turning the valve with the wrench it slipped off and cut a hole in the glove of his suit and when the wrench slipped it hit the pipe causing a momentary burst of steam. "Jack are you alright?!" Tali yelled slamming her hand on the consol almost breaking the button. "Yea…yea I'm fine the wrench just slipped and hit a steam pressure release. Nothing to be worried about." Jack said as the steam dissipated and emerged floating toward the door.
He came thru the decontamination room and as it was finishing it warned there was a containment breach of dark matter in the chamber. "Great.." Jack said to himself looking at the cut, blood now coming thru the suit.
Jack met up with Tali in the control room for the engines and looked at all the readings, everything was reading green and looked like they could be fired up and ready to go. "Good job Tali, looks like we may finally be able to get off this rock." Jack said smiling looking at the eyes behind the purple hued glass. "That looks like a bad cut Jack." She said taking his hand looking at the cut he had wrapped a rag around. "Oh it'll be fine im going to the med lab to get it fixed up right now don't worry. I'll let you know all about it. For now see if the communication crew need your help." Jack said smiling and walking Tali out of the room. As Jack looked back into the room he noticed a warning pop up saying that someone had been contaminated and the affects were unknown. This only cause Jack to worry greatly about what had just happened.
Jack went to the med bay and time had gotten away from him and didn't realize how long he had been there. He was constructing an arm brace that would keep the dark matter from spreading into the rest of his body. The brace connected onto his shoulder and wrapped around his arm and down onto his hand like a glove for his whole arm. The brace used a form of light energy to keep the dark matter away from his chest and more importantly his heart. His right arm would forever be incased in the brace and he would no longer be able to feel anything from the outside world.
Tali walked in as he was running test to see if there were any adverse affect on his tissue that he had to be worried about but the test hadn't completed to give an answer yet. He noticed he had already lost feeling in his arm but it wasn't painful. "What is that thing?" Tali asked walking up behind him as he finished welding the last protective covering on just in time. "It's just a safety precaution that Gilliam advised me to take." Jack said spinning around in the chair to show her. "It looks pretty primitive." Tali teased showing her right arm of her suit. "Hey that's not fair! I only have so much to work with around here." Jack said shocked that Tali would go after his brace. "I'm only joking. When we get some place with real tech I will help you build another one that looks a lot cooler." Tali said taking his arm and looking it over.
Tali and Jack had a moment while she went over the design flaws that Jack in his rushed state had completely overlooked but unknowingly to her the brace was equipped with a light matter generator to keep dark matter away from the rest of his body. The device wasn't large enough to be noticed right away but Jack knew the longer Tali poked and prodded at the brace she would find out but at the time it didn't seem so imperative and he enjoyed working this closely with her. He finally decided that he should stop her from finding the device and opted for them both to go to the communication room and help with restoring the communication for the ship so if they left for the comm. room to see if they could trace down the problem.
Tali, Jack and Liara worked long into the night trying to figure out why the communication was still down despite the antennae saying it was operating fine. "Gilliam is there any kind of power surge or electro-magnetic field keeping us from sending a signal off the planet?" Jack asked the Ai while he typed on a consol trying to find the cause. "There isn't anything abnormal about the planet's atmosphere that would keep the ships signals from leaving the planet's surface." Gilliam informed him and showed a read out layered to show the different parts of the atmosphere and nothing looked abnormal. "What if it isn't anything wrong with the transmitting maybe it has something to do with the ship just being on the planet?" Liara commented. "What do you mean the antennae are more than powerful enough to send out a signal across the galaxy." Tali informed her. "Was this ship ever designed to be on a planet?" Liara asked looking at Jack.
Jack looked at the interface for the Ai in that room. "No this ship was never designed to be landed on a plnet. It was designed to be serviced in space and repaired at its construction site." Gilliam told them as the list of space stations rolled thru the computer showing all of them being incompatible with handling a ship of that size. "Alright well I guess we could try again once we get in space but keep in mind once we go up we can't go back down. The ship simply couldn't handle another reentry." Jack said worriedly. "Why not? It did it once." Tali asked. "Because when I entered the atmosphere it ripped most of the armor plating off. I recovered as much of it as I could but a lot of it is still lost somewhere. With the loss of so much of the armor plating I built the shield generator to add extra protection. Without it this ship wouldn't handle much of an attack before it got torn to pieces." Jack said showing an image of the ship and the shield the covered the massive warship.
They left the communication problem to rest for a while and went to check on the weapon systems that Garrus was currently spearheading to have some sort of defensive measure against an attack. Jack and Tali went down to the generator for the main batteries to help out. Jack was happy with all the work being done so quickly and finally could leave the planet he had been stuck on but just had one final problem to work out.
Garrus was at a consol trying to find out why the generator wasn't coming online. Jack and Tali showed up to try and help tackle the problem just as Garrus was starting to lose his cool.
"No why wouldn't you just start for me. Do you need some love? Or maybe some calibrations, Garrus style?" Garrus said trying to coax the generator into working with him. "I didn't know that sweet talking my generator would get it to start." Jack said teasingly walking up behind Garrus and looking at the monitor that had a readout of the generator. "Sometimes that's what it take but I have been sweet talking this thing for two days and it doesn't look like it's working." Garrus said chuckling a little. "Well I am pretty sure Jack turned the gas onto this one unlike what he did with the engines." Tali said jokingly looking up to see in the generator had fuel in the main intake. "The generator will shut off if it's going to explode the engines, not so much. So I never turned the gas off ." Jack said sarcastically. "Hey know why don't you guys just take it into a different room. If there was a gas leak the sparks coming from you two would blow the ship right apart." Garrus said laughing looking at both of them. Jack and Tali both blushed bright red, so much so you could see it thru Tali's visor.
"Wait a spark! That's it!" Garrus said excitedly. "What do you mean? I have been all over this generator and it doesn't take any kind of spark to run it." Jack said being very confused at what Garuus was typing frantically on the computer. "Think of it like an old gas grill. You can have fuel and the grill but without a spark nothing will happen. Well that's what we need is a spark to start the generator and once it starts its self-sustaining and doesn't need one." Garrus said excitedly. "Well do you have a lighter?" Tali asked again jokingly. "Not unless it's as big as a house. The generator being almost three stories tall we are gonna need one big lighter." Garrus said irritated running into another problem. "What about an explosion? A small controlled one should be enough to jump it off according to my calculations." Jack said showing Garrus the computer model he had made up. "Yes but one too large will rupture the generator housing and cook all of us." Tali said showing the blast had to be precise. "That shouldn't be difficult." Jack said smiling grabbing a few things from a locker nearby.
"So do you just keep highly combustible material laying around all over the place?" Tali asked as Jack made up some explosives to use to jump start the generator. "Yea pretty much. Oh and if any of you find some thermite laying around let me know. I missed placed it somewhere." Jack said looking up at both of them and smiling and going back to work. "You're kidding right?" Tali and Garrus both asked in unison. Jack just smiled and walked into the inner core of the generator with the explosive and set it. He ran back out as fast as he could sealing the generator chamber behind him.
"Where is the detonator?" Garrus asked. "Now where is the fun in that?" Jack asked smiling waiting for a bang. "You're crazy you know that?" Garrus told him. "I think it's a human thing." Tali said condemningly. "Hey there isn't any fun being alive if you don't almost get blown up a few times a year." Jack said covering his ears. "Yup crazy, as bad as Shepard for sure." Tali said taking cover with Garrus behind the consol.
The explosion went off and a blue light could be seen gradually increasing in intensity. The generator had started and the weapon systems started coming online one by one. All three of them cheered as they looked at the monitor and watched the power level slowly rising. Jack suddenly stopped as he noticed one of the capital ship beam cannons started charging. "Gilliam get this ship in the air right now! Get everyone on board and to their stations!" Jack yelled running out of the room. Tali and Garrus both ran after him once they noticed.
Chapter 2 Return to Space