This is part of the Writers Anonymous Alternate Format Challenge.
{I will be adding more short poems to this story file later in the spring to make a selected collection of Mass Effect poetry.}
For those unfamiliar with Mass Effect, a brief glossary of names used in this:
Commander Rosamund Shepard – the narrating character, a human space marine. She was recently named a special-agent of an interspecies council [the very first human so named] and given the task of tracking down Saren, a dangerous criminal who in league with 'the Reapers'
Liara – an alien squad-member, she's team lore-mistress.
Kaidan – a crew-member, lieutenant in the marines, he's recently been injured in battle.
Garrus – an alien squad member, he's the same race as the criminal they're hunting.
Tali – an alien squad-member, she's particularly skilled at fighting synthetics.
The Alliance is the human space military
The Citadel is a space station.
The Reapers are a race of enormous, ancient machines which Shepard believes are seeking to wipe out galactic civilization.
Many days from Hoc's hard gaze
Many days from Virmire
We burst again on the purple rays
And the gleaming Citadel spires.
All is just as it was before.
No fright, or bustle, no signs of war.
As if the hideous threat we've so plainly seen
Far across space, was only a dream.
We leave the docks as soon as may be
Gliding out o'er the Citadel towers
Away from the Council's stubborn seat
And the halls, and the courts, and the bowers.
Our intent is for the far icy shore
Of distant Noveria, and yet before
We can sail to the relay, Alliance Command
Hails down our vessel, and conference demands.
Hackett, Admiral of the fleet
Has an order for me
And calls a diversion of my ship
He calls back the Normandy
Back to the Sol system, back to Earth
To its orbit, to our own moon
Where a training system needs shut down
He bids – he requests – I come soon.
The training VI on Luna Base
Where young marines train for battle in space
Has gone rogue, killed cadets, overridden control
And now as if mad, the whole training ground holds.
'We need someone to shut it down.
I know that you're a Spectre now.
But you're still everything that you have been
You're still a human, an Alliance marine.
We're calling you in, Shepard. Come soon as you can.'
For a moment I stop.
But I understand.
'But Rosamund, a training-ground?
That doesn't really very much sound
Urgent enough to justify
Even the length of time to fly.
The Reapers have knowledge which we do not
Every moment that passes develops their plot.'
Liara looks up with her great blue eyes.
'Surely the base has marines close by?'
Kaidan nods.
'Of course we do.
That can't be the reason. Commander?'
'True.
We have whole fleets which orbit round.
This isn't about the training-ground.'
'Then why ...?' asks Liara.
'To set precedent.
Does a Spectre come when an Admiral's sent?
They chose their time well. It's mere hours to Sol.
What it takes from our journey's a very slight toll.
We have another mindless machine
Out there killing men, a malfunction I deem.
The Reapers can wait a few hours more.
It's the smallest blip in the course of this war.'
'Shall we get ready?'
I smile at her.
'I'll need you right here. You're doing good work.
And not you, Lieutenant. Your wounds are scarce sealed.
There'll be battle enough when you're fully healed.
I'll slip in with one squad. That's best for this job.
They're worried that Saren's smearing the Turians?
This is visible. I'm taking Garrus.
And the technical skill of those Quarians!
Tali will also come with us.'
The sky is black; as black as ink.
And the ground is as bright as salt.
It stretches away; it swells and sinks
Splashed with shadows and faults.
A soundless, airless, brilliant waste
Open above to the cold of space
Where the dust rises up from the Mako's treads
And drops straight down in its age old beds
Where never a wind blew drifting streams
And never a rain came to wash it clean.
The barren companion of the fertile Earth
Lies in its unchanging silence.
Cold Diane looks upon warm Maia's mirth
With a placid, icy defiance.
While in brightness she silently lies
Our little truck creeps below her dark skies,
Through lowlands and valleys and under the lips
Of rises of stone, where dust falls and slips.
Past the scout towers and past the pitfalls
Out of the line where the spy-glasses fall
Up to the circle of turrets which rise
Above the hard ground where the rogue VI lies.
'Take the wheel Garrus – avoid and evade.'
He takes her and spins! In and out of the cannonade
Til I have disabled with cannon the guns,
Laid open the bunker – our foe cannot run.
Down the stair to the bunker's depths
Out of the light of the Earth
Down to a mind which knows no rest
And stares out on moon fields as a curse.
The underground tunnels are dim and cold
The lights are red and the smell is old.
A strange prickling grows at the back of my neck.
As of unseen eyes in the dark
Whyever so empty? Where are all its mechs?
We go deeper yet none do we mark.
Yet I know they are there
In the tunnels, stark and bare
Waiting out of sight and sound
Far beneath the lunar ground
Held back deeper, why so deep
Why so far it makes us creep
To find the battle we know must come.
In the whirring chill, my squad grows dumb
And stares big eyed in every nook
Looks twice at the ground for every foot.
While in silence we follow our charts
Deeper and deeper into the heart
Of the rogue computer's many years home.
Shadowy dim is the redding gloam.
They attack altogether, all down in the core
A hundred mockery things of war
Fighting more fiercely than wasp or ant
With their mockery guns they fight but they can't
O'er power shields or stand up to our fire
They fall, fall in droves, by the troop they expire.
But even after the last one falls
Those eyes seem to follow our backs
We turn and we turn and we scan through the walls
For those eyes which never attack.
Deeply buried's the VI's core
Walled in close by the dummies of war
And long we work in the low red murk
To uncover, to open a door.
And now and oft, Tali grabs at her gun
And turns upon … nothing. It's bare.
And Garrus will hurl down the sheeting and run
Towards an enemy … who is not there.
We post Tali guard and go on as before,
Shavings of metal scatter the floor,
Power tools scream, and not sounds of war,
And yet none of us still can ignore,
The eyes we can't see.
We uncover the core.
There it lies. A box. No more large than a chest.
Small and unfeatured, seeming at rest.
A little thing, to have caused so much trouble,
A silent thing, in the midst of the rubble.
The centre of all the mindless rage
The rabid thing which stole the age
From men too young to die
The waiting thing which held the base
The watching thing that haunts this place
The silent, waiting spy.
The thing which sat for decades long
Playing and playing the martial song
That we taught it long years before
What made it break the rhythm, the beat
Break out of the song it was taught by the fleet
What made this machine go to war?
I reach for the power
A shriek fills the space
A shriek of the airways that run through this place
A shriek of the light-bulbs. A shriek of the lines
Which carry the power. Sparks flash and floors whine.
'Shepard! I've got something!'
I hear Tali say.
'Shut it down! Shut it down! It's not going to obey!'
I yank out the cords and shut the thing down
Like a light going off the cacophonous sound
Falls dead on the air
The empty lights glare.
The box sits black on the ground
'Tali, what have you?'
She tilts her masked head.
'Nothing, Shepard, just – something it said.
It sent out a signal, as you came near.
If I didn't know better … Well, come and look here.'
She holds out her omnitool. I see in the glow
The dashes and dots of the words of our foe.
It is in Morse, a code I know well.
It repeats o'er and o'er, just one word
'Help'
We leave the VI shut down in the hold
And climb back up through the bunker so cold.
Who was it calling? Who taught it to cry?
Where did it learn to seek aid from the sky?
It was not built for that. It was built just to be
A training ground tool to engage young marines.
It was never programmed to fight to the death
Nor call for aid – never taught to fear death.
And yet … I walk in untrodden wastes
What I thought was firm ground drops away out of place.
If a training VI can learn how to fear,
What of the Reapers? They surely appear
As though they were egos, as black the void
Irrational, cruel, and completely devoid
Of ought but a hunger, to impose their own will
To control, to torment, to cow, and to kill.
And how if what it seems is in fact as it is?
How if the machines in some fiendish sense – live.
Whoever built them, for what ancient war
What if their resolve to subdue to them more
Was not automatic, but their ego's desire
What if not mere numbers, but the hell of black fire
Burned at the heart of these monsters from space?
As fear cried out of the heart of this place.
The light of the Earth breaks out o'er the land
As we step out of the mound.
It softens and mutes the black of the shadows
The hard sun strikes on the ground.
I look up, to the world of living green
Up to the world of men
The arc of umber and ultramarine
So filled beyond my ken
With life that laughs in its leaping streams
And prowls beneath oaks in its narrow denes
And soars in the garlands of sea born steam,
There life – good and ill – uncountable teems
And children laugh and young lovers dream.
It seems so near I could reach out
And touch its cloak of mist
A leap would bring my hand into
The shallows the sunlight's kissed
And it is as far as an image of glory
Seen by a child in a sky o'er the sea.
I could go up, and my crew with me
I could, but it must not be.
For this is that which is at stake
It's this that is threatened by that thing that waits
Out in the deep and dark of space
Scheming and plotting to bring its own race
Here to this womb of life.
That thing I had called a mindless machine
That thing which, in theory, ought to have been.
I look up again to the light.
And then turn away. For we must be gone.
I don't know what we fight, or where it went wrong.
But I know that they're coming. That matters far more
That wonderments why. For we are at war.
'Shepard to Normandy, pick us up. Let's away.
The task here is done, and there's no time to stay.'
