The UNSC Spirit of Fire floated aimlessly through the void of space. It had once been a colony ship, but was re-purposed during the war as a war ship. The ship has impressive armaments for a re-purposed ship. Armed with a 4 round cycling MAC cannon along with 22 original deck mounted rail guns, 4 of which are damaged beyond field repair, and numerous CIWS 50mm canons. The ship was forced to flee from a Flood infested Forerunner shield without their Slip-Space drive core. With no way to build another drive core, most of the crew entered cryonic sleep leaving a skeleton crew to man the bridge and switch out every 2 years. But traveling through space can be mind damaging to those awake for it. 4 of those still awake during the eighth rotation went homicidal on 2547. They locked the AI Serina out of helm control an set course for a sun, believing that they would never survive the trip so why try. They vented atmosphere from the rest of the ship and locked down the bridge. A single marine was able to take down the mad men, with no other option than to take their lives. He was able to restore atmosphere to the critical parts of the ship and change course before his wounds finished him. Serina was left alone, the ship heading for the void between galaxies with no way to wake the crew outside of a collision emergency. She dumped as much of her memory as she could to preserve herself longer from rampancy, but was only able to stave it off for 1 year. She lasted 8 years before going rampant. During her rampancy, she thought she detected ships in the void of galaxies between The Milky Way and a galaxy that closely resembled it. For 300 years, the Spirit of Fire drifted in to a new galaxy as Serina overcame her rampancy and became the first AI to achieve meta-stability.

James Cutter came awake very slowly. His eyes refused to come open as he lay on the cold deck of his ship. He could hear the other crew members complaining about the same problem, along with others. He could hear them complaining about not being able to move their limbs or having trouble thinking. "Captain Cutter, are you able to move?" Serina's voice came over the speakers. "Yes, though I can't see anything right now," he complained as he rolled over on his stomach to stand. His limbs were incredibly weak as he leaned against the cryo-pod. "I'm not surprised captain, You've all been asleep for over 300 years," her calm voice came over the speaker. His eyes snapped open as he heard that. "W-w-w-what?" He could hear the exclamations of his crew from down the line of cryonic pods. "What the hell do you mean we've been asleep for over 300 years!" He exclaimed.

It took about 2 hours for all of Cutter's questions to be answered. He learned what happened during the 300+ years. All the damage that his ship had taken during the trip, 3 additional rail guns inoperable, massive armor damage and the many corpses that needed to be cleared from the lower decks were only the beginning. His ship would need massive repairs that he was lucky enough to have most of the parts needed. He learned that they were in a new galaxy altogether and the chance of making a return trip was almost non-existent. They were currently in a system that had 1 planet in the life zone, but the atmosphere was toxic to humans. It had nothing useful for food or water stuffs, but was a gold mine for metals and things necessary to bring the sub-light engines and the reactors to full power. It would take over a month for the reactors and armor to be brought to full effectiveness, and 3 months to restore the engines to full power, so they had no choice but to set out a comm-buoy as their resources wouldn't last that long with the full crew. As the end of the first month came to a close, they had a surprise. A ship came out of FTL at the outer most edge of the system, outside of the effective range of the defensive fighter screen.

April 21, 2183 Citadel time line

Cmdr John Shepard Stared at the Citadel Council, As they instated him in as the first human Spectre. "You have your mission Cmdr, get to it," the asari councilor Tevos dismissed, with Sparatus the turian and Valern the salarian councilors leaving the stage. John, with his teammates Tali'Zorah nar Rayya and Garrus Vakarian a quarian and turian respectively, turned and made their way down the walkway toward the human councilor and Captain Anderson. They quickly learned all they could from the 2 humans, before the 2 went on their ways. Shepard overheard an admiral arguing with someone on a comm, and learned the mans problem. John walked away with a request from Admiral Kohaku to search for his missing marines. John and his team made their way toward the dock after accomplishing the things he needed to on the Citadel, where he met up with Udina and Anderson again. He was given command of the SSV Normandy and they left the Citadel.

After gaining a mission from Urdnot Wrex, the krogan mercenary, they dealt with the scumbag who had Wrex's family armor. "This is it, I can't believe my ancestors ever wore this piece of crap," Wrex lifted the old armor up as he examined it, "but at least I've got it back." "I'm glad we could help you get it back," John told him Garrus nodded in the background. Shepard had helped him deal with his past demons as well. "I might just be starting to like you Shepard." With that he started out of the base owned by the now deceased turian Tonn Actus. John looked over at Garrus, the turian shrugged, "I don't understand him any better than you do Shepard." He said with a smile on his face. Shepard smiled as he nodded, "Well, lets get back to the Normandy."

As they docked the shuttle in the Normandy's hanger, Joker came over the speaker, "Shepard, Admiral Hackett is on the comm for you. I'll patch him through when your ready." "Alright Joker, give me a few minutes to get to the comm," was his response as Shepard moved to the galaxy map. "Put him through Joker." The admiral's deep voice came out of the comm, "Cmdr, we've just discovered what we think is a distress signal as it keeps repeating, but it's not compatible with our comm systems. I know your in the Argos Rho cluster, but your the only ship that can get to the signal in the Artemis Tau cluster in any reasonable amount of time. The signal originates in a system just outside of that cluster, but still in range of your fuel reserves. We picked up the signal with some old tech that works sporadic at best, so the signal could have been playing a lot longer than that, we're asking you to put the pedal to the metal Cmdr. If we had anyone else in the area, we'd have them do it, but your all we have Shepard." Shepard thought about it for a moment, "Are we sure it's not a geth trick?" "The signal doesn't match anything your quarian gave us on geth tech Shepard." Shepard thought about the mission, "Alright admiral, I'll check it out. Shepard out." With that the comm ended. "Joker, Set course for the Artemis Tau cluster." "Roger that Cmdr. Trip should take about 7 days." Outside the ship, the Normandy jumped to FTL heading for the mass relay.

3 Days in to the trip, they started to pick up the signal. Still incompatible with mass effect comm systems though. But the pattern did repeat every 30 minutes. The idea that it was a distress signal became more and more of a possibility. The crew debated for many hours on what left the distress signal. Was it a ship of an undiscovered species? Maybe it was a group of surviving protheans. Maybe it was a just a garbled signal. The ideas kept getting wilder than the one before it. When asked, Wrex just wanted it to be someone to fight, Tali wanted someone to talk engineering, Garrus refused to speculate, Kaiden Alenko and Ashley Williams wanted a lost colony ship, the new crew member Liara T'Soni wanted it to be a surviving prothean group. And Shepard just said he wasn't going to make even a guess at who the people were.

The end of the trip came very quickly. 4 days seemed to pass in the blink of an eye, and they came out of FTL in a flash of light. "Cmdr, I've got fighters flying out there," Joker's voice snapped over the comm, "Keep out of effective weapons range Joker! I'm on my way," Shepard sprinted down the hall as he headed for the bridge. He came up behind Joker, catching his breath in the seconds it took. "Cmdr, your going to want to see this," Joker spoke before Shepard could ask anything. Joker brought up a few images of the fighters on the holographic screen. The image on screen showed a surprisingly human looking fighter. The designs of it matching what would be designed by human hands if they'd taken an old air superiority fighter and made it space worthy. The gun and missile emplacements easy to distinguish. "Cmdr, we're receiving a hail, but I'm not sure from where or on what type of carrier the signal is," by this point the other members of Shepard's team had come on to the bridge, and Garrus noticed something they didn't, "What's that coming from around the planet?" He pointed to the display. Joker zoomed in on the object, "It looks like a ship, but it has to be massive. I'll take a reading." It only took seconds for the data to scroll across the screen, and it shut everyone up for a second. The size of the ship came up before a more detailed image of it did, Ashley was the one to comment, "Holy Shit! That thing's bigger than any known dreadnaught in the galaxy!" The size displayed an astounding 2.5 km long, and that was only the length. A ding got Joker's attention, "Uh Cmdr, the hail has changed carrier wave. It's now on a radio wave." Everybody was a little surprised by that. Radio wasn't used for much these days. "Then put it on Joker."

Spirit of Fire Bridge

When the ship dropped out of FTL, there was no warning. It wasn't there one minute, then it was. The ship looked nothing like any known species ship class. For one thing, no known species used that small of corvette class anymore. The UNSC had once had a military corvette class, but it was decommissioned when it was discovered that it stood no chance against anything but covenant fighter classes. The cap fighters started to arm all weapons as they scrambled for defensive positions. Capt Cutter snapped to the weapons officer, "Arm all online rail guns, missiles and charge the MAC!" The weapons officer did as he was told, the missile pods coming online instantly along with half the remaining rail guns and the charge for the MAC starting, "Sir, power fluctuations through the rail guns! At best we have half the guns, at worst they might fail all together!" "Damn, lets just hope their peaceful. Serina, what can you tell me?" The AI snapped her attention to the Capt, "They speak English," her calm response stopped everyone cold. "They speak English?" His disbelieving voice asked, "Yes Capt," she said this as she brought up an image of the vessel, along the side of the ship in bold letters read SR-1 Normandy. Everyone on the bridge was stunned silent. Cutter was the first to recover, "Lt Alvaro," his comms officer looked at him, "hail that ship." The Lt nodded and did as told. The signal sent, but the other vessel did nothing but sit in space. "Capt," Serina spoke, "maybe they use a different form of communication." Her suggestion was much more than reasonable. They were in a galaxy different then their own, so the thought that they would use Slip-Space comms was laughable. But the fact that they used English gave Cutter an idea. "Alvaro, try the old radio channels." The Lt nodded and followed the order.

Normandy Bridge

Joker nodded to the order, and followed through. "SR-1 Normandy, this is the UNSC Spirit of Fire. What is your species, how do you know the English language? I've got questions and you have the answers I need." Shepard didn't know what to do for a moment, but he knew he needed to respond pretty quickly, "Uh, this is the Normandy, who am I speaking to? I've never heard of the UNSC before. I speak English because it's the language of my home world." He was cut off, "That's not possible! English is the language of UEG, the UNSC and all her colonies! I know we are in a galaxy that's close to the Milky Way galaxy, but we're not in Milky Way!" Shepard was confused, but he cut the other captain off as he was getting annoyed, "A, we are in the Milky Way, B I don't know who the UEG are and C, I'm a council Spectre! So I'm not answering any questions until you tell me who you people are!" Shepard waited for a response from the other captain as his crew looked a little concerned about the massive vessel. "The UEG stands for United Earth Government, and we came from the Milky Way, so what you say is impossible." The alien members of the crew were staring at Shepard, waiting to see what he'd do. "There is no such thing as the UEG, Earth and her colonies are under the auspices of the Systems Alliance. Who the hell are you people?" He shouted in to the radio.

Spirit of Fire bridge

Everyone of the bridge crew was staring at the captain, waiting for his orders. "Serina, have you made any progress in a visual link?" The AI nodded, "Yes captain, all you need to do is cut the radio transmission." "Normandy, I'm cutting off transmission. I'll hail back in exactly 5 minutes." "Acknowledged." The Normandy's commander responded. "Alright people, I want my weapons online. Ops, what's the MAC charge?" The officer was quick on the take, "80% sir!" "Any more power issues with the rail guns?" The officer shook his head, "No sir. Power holding at 10 deck guns." Cutter nodded. "Serina, what can you tell me about that ship?" The AI looked at the captain, "It has almost no armor, the ship uses a method of FTL I don't know the science to, unknown form of power, unknown armaments and it is incredibly small for a warship. I can tell you it's armed, just not with what. I'm ready to hack their computers on you order though," she left the statement hanging for the order. "Not yet, we'll see how the conversation goes, then decide whether to hack them." She nodded, "Time Captain." He nodded, "Alvaro, send the hail."