A/N: Thank you for taking the time to read this story, and I hope you enjoy the direction that I take it following the events of ME3's 'destroy' ending. If you enjoy the direction the story is going (or don't) leave me a review and let me know! Additionally, at the bottom of this prologue will be a compendium of all the 'Codex' entries that come along the way as I post new chapters, for reference.
Prologue
London, 2186
This isn't London.
Sure, there were still enough people living here to call it a city, but this isn't London. London was a rich blue sky, the idle sound of a million others bustling around the city, from street to street and shop to shop; this isn't London. London was an abrupt rain storm during a summer's afternoon, the cool droplets of water meeting your skin as Big Ben's bells chimed gently in the background. This isn't London, but it used to be. The rich blue sky that once hung overhead had been swallowed by a sick black cloud, which stained any breathable air with the permanent putrid stench of war and death. Instead of the soft chiming of bells and the idle roar of people in the city, the only sound available to break the monotony of silence was the crunching of debris underfoot, and the grating sound of Big Ben's damaged bell tolling over a broken city.
God... they're all gone.
Did we get anyone to the beam?
Negative, our entire force was decimated. It's too much... we need to regroup... fall back to the buildings.
Hammer's wiped out. all forces, retreat! Pull back! Pull back!
Marine Gunnery Chief Clint Romez became suddenly aware of the cold sweat forming on his face, and shook his head quickly in an effort to snap him out of the phantom horrors from the night before. Hoping to anchor himself back in the here and now, Romez turned his head to the right and squinted his eyes until his helmet mounted light swept over the other figure he knew was there. A murky silhouette of a man, wearing an identical set of Systems Alliance Marine Corps (SAMC) armor to Romez's own, turned his head in kind to glance at Romez in acknowledgment. The marine was Romez's patrol partner, Lieutenant Richand Donnel also of the Marine Corps. The sharp angular design of his matte black helmet and its single eye-height visor meant that none of Donnel's facial expressions were available Romez, but he was able to understand the man's sentiment just from the jerking of his head and the slight sag of his shoulders. The Marines were given an intimidating and near-mechanical appearance in their armor, though any casual observer would be able to tell that the humans were growing weary.
The pair were half a standard hour from the end of their hours-long patrol, to which they'd been assigned only a day after they had fought tooth and nail for Earth's survival. It'd seemed like they had failed when Hammer Squad had been demolished by Harbinger, a reality punctuated by Coats' cold English voice as he gave the order to retreat. Just as all else seemed hopeless, Admiral Hackett's gravelly voice crackled across all Coalition lines, this is the Admiral, we've got reports that someone made it to the Citadel. We need to give them time to get those arms open. All fleets converge on the crucible, protect it at all costs. It'd been the message that they'd needed to hear and had been the last reserve of fuel for the Marines to dig in and protect Earth while whoever had survived primed the Crucible. And that was it, they'd managed to fire the Crucible and the Reapers had fallen over dead, as had their husks, banshees, and other thralls. At the time most ground troops expected the Reapers to get back up, everything the Galaxy had been shown was that it was damn near impossible to kill a Reaper, but the Reapers never again moved.
The Crucible's success hasn't been without cost, hardly the least of which was the Citadel that'd fallen from Earth's sky, cracking apart from whatever the Crucible had unleashed on the Galaxy. It was a sobering moment for all the troops on the ground, many of whom had been whooping and hollering in victory at the downed giants. The Citadel had been home to so many, and there was little chance of surviving what it went through during descent and impact. Still, Alliance top brass had assigned all non-essential personnel to sweep the wreckage, look for anyone who might've survived the harvesting, or the Citadel's crash. Initial disaster response teams had divided the wreckage into 15 'sectors' to make it easier to sweep, each of which was assigned an A-Z designation. Romez and Donnel had been assigned to 7R, but 8 hours of patrols later and it'd only been an effort in emotional exhaustion, sifting through so many corpses. Romez didn't mind the physical hardships or the smell—what really got to him was the sight. The countless bodies that were strewn across the rubble, the remains of shops, restaurants, or apartments that he'd seen aboard the Citadel, God forbid if he saw someone that he'd known in the debris.
As soon as combat abruptly ended, the reports began pouring in that long-range communications were out; later Earth's remaining forces became grimly aware of the fact that the Sol Relay had in-fact gone dark. It would appear that whatever was powerful enough to destroy a galaxy of Reapers and the Citadel had also damaged the Mass Relay network. Earth desperately needed medical supplies, evacuation, food and water for the survivors planeside, but without the relays, those much-needed provisions were going to take far longer, and the evacuations even more so.
The hour was nearing 2330 GST when Romez and Donnel were wrapping up their last sweeps of 7R for the night. The pair had moved to the edge of the sector where it bordered on the normal wreckage of the city when they heard a noise different than what they were used to. Snapping to his left Romez's M-8 Avenger was in his hand and pointed down range, its rail-mounted light illuminating the section of bombed out building where he'd heard the noise. "Did you hear that?" He asked over their squad-link to Donnel. "Affirmative, Gunny. Suggesting comms silence to see if we can pick it up again." Without another word, silence settled between the pair while they stood in the dark and listened, trying to track down the source of the sound. Suddenly there it was again, but this time they knew exactly what it was and it was coming far more common now. It was a raspy and wet gasp, intermixed with a fit of coughing.
Dropping his Avenger Romez burst forward, motioning needlessly for Donnel to follow suit, "We've got a survivor!" the Gunnery Chief shouted in surprise and fright. While picking through corpses had been draining, finding a survivor only to lose them would be devastating to the Marine. Still, his SAMC training kicked in and he felt his arms and legs acting without prompting from his brain, the muscle memory of years of service beginning the steps to field treat a downed marine.
As he drew closer he could make out a woman, dressed in what looked like heavily damaged Alliance armor, clutching onto another body. Romez began to softly talk to the survivor while he knelt down, attempting to triage the situation "Don't worry, I'm here, I'm Gunnery Chief Romez. Hold on you'll be fine." Were he in a hospital he'd be prioritizing whoever took the most attention to survive, but this wasn't a hospital and one survivor was better than none. With his right hand he managed to pull the woman away so that he could get to her, his left hand snaking out to find the jugular of the body she'd been clinging to—and though his fingers were pressed right where the jugular should've been, there wasn't even the slightest tremor of movement. "DOA" he pronounced, turning his attention back to the charred and bloody woman. Her entire left cheek was caked in both dry and wet blood, and the lower right part of her face was blackened from smoke. She continued to struggle out breaths while Romez worked her over, and though he wasn't a doctor in any official capacity, Romez had heard this kind of breathing before. He'd heard it in VA Hospitals, bedside as one of his comrades breathed their last breath from injuries sustained.
A sudden rage came over Romez, his veins aflame with heat as his blood figuratively boiled. In defiance of the odds that the universe had laid out before him Romez's hands began to move faster as he checked over her for identification and wounds. Whoever this was wasn't breathing their last breaths, there was no way, Romez wouldn't allow it. After all this woman had survived in the crash, there was no way that Death could take them once they'd made it back to Earth. The 26-year-old Marine felt his right-hand glance across something cool, his eyes dropping to find a charred set of dog tags dangling from her neck. Scooping them up in his palm, Romez began to scan over them for identification. The side that was up offered a very simple identification, as all it bore was the insignia of an N7. Upon flipping it over, his thumb reflexively wiping across the metal tag to clear the ash and dirt from it, his eyes narrowed at the small lettering.
Shepard J. 5923-AC-2826 D.O.B. 2154
SAMC Commander, N7; Citadel Council Spectre
Was already feeling the shock set in, his eyes widened as he read the tag a second and third time. "Holy shit…. Lieutenant!" Romez's bark garnered the attention of the nearby Donnel, who had stood stepped into the open-air to call for help. As the Lieutenant ducked back into the makeshift shelter, Donnel eyed the wounded woman with a cocked eyebrow "I got MedEvac on the horn, they're inbound two minutes. Who's our survivor?" "It's fucking Commander Shepard… she survived. ID the other body!" Even while speaking Romez was working to unfasten Shepard's ruined armor from her limp body to better assess the nature of her injuries.
To his credit, the shakiness Lieutenant Donnel's voice was as best controlled as anyone, even the man himself would expect from a Junior Officer as he called back, "Tags ID him as Admiral David Anderson, Gunny." The news was a gut punch to Romez as well, and he remembered how sharply he'd barked out 'DOA' when they'd arrived on scene, desperate to save at least one of the two, only to now find out that the man had been one of the most revered individuals in the Systems Alliance. It didn't change how dead his body had been when they'd found him, but guilt still bit at Romez for half a second. He was brought back to their present situation by the snap of Shepard's armor finally breaking away to reveal her red and black thermal bodysuit below.
He could hear as he worked the soft hum and occasional jarring beep of Shepard's auto-medi-gel dispenser, which had already emptied whatever stores she had into the woman's bodysuit to be distributed to wounds, some of which Romez could see had been sealed. His hands softly felt along her sides in search of open wounds, which his left hand found as it settled on a slick patch of blood that had slowly formed a pool beside her. The Gunnery Chief was already working on applying the medicinal salve to her open wound when he heard a rasping sound different than the breathing he'd grown accustomed to. Romez looked up, his eyes shifting towards her face to be met by a pair of hazy blue-green eyes, weakly opened and looking directly at him. She's awake.. how is she awake? "Shhhh shhh you're alright, rest now you're alright!" Romez softly assured her, hoping the woman wouldn't try to sit up and make her injuries even worse.
Despite Donnel's pleas with her, the rasping of Shepard's voice didn't stop until she was able to get mangled words out, "Di… did we do it...?" Romez felt pain shoot through him just listening to how hard Shepard had to struggle to speak, but he nodded his head as he kept applying medi-gel to the wounded Commander. "You did it, ma'am. The Reapers are dead, we survived." Looking at the woman's face Romez wasn't sure if she'd actually heard his words. As he was speaking her eyelids had fluttered and she'd slipped back into unconsciousness, Romez only hoped she'd found some measure of peace in that brief flicker of consciousness.
CODEX:
DoCA: Department of Colonial Affairs. DoCA is responsible for overseeing all matters relating to colonies of the Systems Alliance.
MARCOMM: Marine Command, simply administration for the Systems Alliance Marine Corps.
SER: Standard Earth Rotations, a way the System Alliance keeps track of date & time across their colonies / ships.
The Villa: The training ground for "Interplanetary Combative Training" in Rio de Jeneiro. Upon completing the first wave of ICT an alliance soldier is deemed N1, and they may complete an additional series of training, most in zero-G or off world, to scale the ranks to N6. An N6 may then be subjected to actual combat situations as part of their training, and if they perform admirably they will be granted the coveted 'N7' designation. 'N' commandos are the highest level of skill and proficiency available in the Alliance Military.
Buffer: The Master Chief aboard an Alliance Warship serves as the 'buffer' between the crew and their CO/XO, fielding personnel questions and concerns as well as minute and menial reports.
Rank Structure: Note: while the Marine Corps are technically a part of the Systems Alliance Navy, they have been allowed by High Command to retain some traditional rank titles. Sometimes a rank within the Marine Corps can bear multiple titles, owing to the common marine behavior of referring to certain ranks by historical names of equivalence. Such can be observed with the rank of 'Chief', in that marines will commonly switch between 'Chief' and 'Sergeant' along with the appropriate prefix (such as Gunnery, Operations, etc.). This can also be seen with the rank of 'Lieutenant Commander' and its traditional name of 'Major'.
The Navy rank structure is as follows:
Officers
Fleet Admiral
Admiral
Vice Admiral
Rear Admiral
Commodore
Captain
Commander
Lieutenant Commander
First Lieutenant
Second Lieutenant
Ensign
NCO
Operations Chief
Gunnery Chief
Service Chief
Enlisted
Specialist
Serviceman First Class
Serviceman Second Class
Serviceman
The Marine rank structure is as follows:
Officers
Field Marshal
General
Lieutenant General
Major General
Brigadier General
Captain
Commander
Lieutenant Commander / Major
First Lieutenant
Second Lieutenant
Ensign
NCO
Operations Chief / Sergeant
Gunnery Chief / Sergeant
Service Chief / Sergeant
Enlisted
Corporal
Lance Corporal
Private First Class
Private