Valkyrie's Song Chapter 1
BORN AMONG THE STARS
Valkyrie's Song is a Mass Effect Fanfiction by Eisen. Mass Effect belongs to Bioware.
AN: Re-uploaded with short chapters concatenated and some improvements to the overall flow
The SSV Einstein silently drifted through the void. The humming of the element zero core and the roar of the massive engines was all lost to the vacuum of space. The only souls that were actually aware of how loud the vessel was were the ones working in engineering. Throughout the rest of the ship the only sounds to be heard were those that the crew made and humming of the air recycler.
Lieutenant Hannah Shepard stood stoically at her post in the Command Information Centre; she and her fellow soldiers seemed to be one with the ship, only moving to salute senior officers as they passed or when their shift changed. Behind the stony mask though, she was bored to tears. Such was the unfortunate fate of marines on a travelling navy vessel.
"Transmission to the Charon relay initiated," a slightly accented female voice called over the ship's intercom.
The usual slow pace of work in the flight deck changed. Suddenly technicians fidgeted away at the amber haptic displays before them with an urgency that seemed out of place. Status checks and confirmations were called from booth to booth as the flight crew prepared for the oncoming jump.
It was all old news to Hannah though; she had been born in a space station, experienced humanity's first forays through the Relays and missed involvement in the First Contact War only because even when threatened with one on an intergalactic scale – especially then – Earth still needed to be protected. She had lived through the growing of humanity's galactic influence – lived in it still – and was now a part of the almost underground war that was the human-batarian conflict.
"All stations, prepare for transit," the disembodied voice informed the crew.
The crew aboard the Einstein did not even notice as the massive ancient construct reached out a tendril of chaotic energy towards the vessel, enveloping it in a blue-white nova and accelerating it to almost incalculable speeds.
To an observer it would have looked as if the tuning-fork shaped relay had simply emitted a random spark of energy that swallowed up the spacecraft, but several million light years away, another Relay flared and the Einstein dropped back to comprehensible speeds, seemingly appearing out of nowhere. The vessel aligned itself towards its destination, and smoothly slid off, as if it had not just completely ignored the laws of physics, getting swallowed by the vacuum once more.
"Drift at one-fourty-five-hundred kay."
Hannah breathed a sigh of relief as her replacement arrived. "Thanks, Zabaleta. Any longer and they'd need to lobotomize someone to have their mind more benumbed than guard-duty makes mine."
"Well you know the Alliance, Sir; always ready and willing to make mental patients of us, one way or another," the man grimly joked.
Hannah merely nodded and hurried to the crew deck, legs protesting at the sudden activity after growing stiff from lack of movement. She had two things that needed urgent attention: first the bathroom, and then the galley.
~o~
The Lieutenant was busy eying her meal-ready-to-eat with suspicion, not quite trusting it to deliver the flavour that the label on the packaging had listed. Almost one and a half centuries since their inception and they still tasted like cardboarded air with a hint of plastic. Grimacing, she bit into what she hoped contained at least some traces of real beef.
While Hannah was vainly trying to chew through what had to have been the toughest steak she had ever tried to eat, a man approached her table and sat down in front of her. He had a firm jaw, closely cropped hair and piercing blue eyes. Unlike Hannah in her hardsuit, he was wearing the same battle-dress-uniform that all the other members of the crew were wearing apart from the commissioned officers. What set his uniform apart, though, were the reflective stripes that ran down the pant-legs and around the sleeves of his shirt, designating him as part of the engineering crew.
The man also tore open a meal-ready-to-eat he had been carrying and looked at what he had received. "Someday…" he sighed, "I'll get all the parts of an MRE together that are required for a fantastic meal."
Hannah grinned, still chewing. "Keep talkin' about them like they're lucky packets and I'll start offering them to Eris."
"Ever ladylike, speaking with your mouth full." The man teased, his face not betraying anything.
Hah!" Hannah almost choked on the processed nutrients she was trying to digest, "keep talking like that, and I'll kick that greasy arse right back to the drive core."
"Alright, alright, I surrender," the man said in a resigned tone, putting his hands in the air to emphasise his words. "Though mind you, they haven't used grease on starships since… the last century?"
He just laughed as a slightly warm and very rubbery potato bounced off his head.
"I always wondered what they meant with 'or for worse', well, no longer!" Hannah exclaimed.
"Of course, the centre of the commotion is always the Shepards," a baritone voice chuckled. Hannah turned to look at who was approaching and grinned broadly. A dark skinned man in an officer's uniform approached, and walking around the table, slid onto the bench next to the other man.
"David!" Hannah and the man who had already been sitting greeted in unison.
"You know you two have no right being so happy, considering the mission."
"Bah, the universe has enough grumpy to deal with in you," Hannah said, waving one hand dismissively, while the other was sticking another piece of the game meat into her mouth using a plastic fork that had lost a few teeth trying to pick up its prey.
"I see your special brand of pragmatism hasn't changed in the, oh, what was it now, twenty eight hours?"
"Ophcorephenoph."
"And there she goes again; trying to sow giblets of MRE. You think any of them will land on fertile soil and grow, David?"
"John, for all I know, that is how they actually make MREs to begin with… would explain the taste."
"True enough," the man identified as John conceded, "Hear that dear? You might want to consider a new career in agriculture."
Hannah merely nodded sagely, or at least it would have been, had her cheeks not been bulging with another portion.
The trio shifted to other topics, talking for a short while longer until David stood up, excusing himself. The two Shepards remained for a while, no longer talking, but quietly sitting together, thinking.
"You know, I don't want this life for her." Hannah said quietly.
"Me neither, but the way things are looking, I don't think there is anything we can do but let her decide." John responded in the same tone.
"Every time I go out there, I worry for her, for you. Will she have a mom by the end of that day, will you have a wife?"
John reached out and took Hannah's hands in his own, moving the tray and leftover MRE packaging aside and looking down at their hands. "I feel the same way, and that's why you have to come back."
~o~
A rare kind of focus controlled the hand as it carefully guided the piece into place, gently pressing it into its designated slot. The hand held steady as the cement that had been applied shortly before melted the two pieces together under the gentle pressure. Letting go of the piece that had just been added, the hand moved away and around, coming back to grasp the whole construction.
It was a turian cruiser, the avian creatures' sharp geometric design apparent. Normally, turian crafts were painted a matte white, highlighted by dull orange streaks, but this one was a dull grey on every exposed surface. The hand gently lifted the craft up, until the space-vessel was in line with a pair of sage green eyes that came close to the craft, scrutinizing it heavily. Then with the utmost care the ship was lowered again, onto a large transparent barrier.
Eris Shepard sat at the workstation that had been set up in the quarters shared by her and her parents. Like many spacers, she was an only child – parents could not afford to have hundreds of children running around with the tight living quarters aboard most vessels. The young teenage girl wondered sometimes what it would have been like to grow up on one of the colonies, or mega-cities; somewhere she could have had many friends, if not perhaps siblings of her own.
But no, that was not her lot. Instead she was the only child her parents ever had, and probably would ever have. She was also alone when it came to the whole vessel, a single child among all the adults. So she learned and grew up, far beyond her years for her age, but despite the forced rapid maturing of character there was an aura about her – a barely contained energy - that revealed itself only through the girl's very deliberate movements.
The look of utter concentration on her face softened until it grew into a relaxed, lopsided grin as she inspected her handiwork. The model cruiser had been seamlessly put together, no excess cement, mould-lines or shavings marring it. Eris pushed out the chair she had been sitting on and, standing up, grabbed an aerosol paint-gun from one of the shelves and carefully applied the first layer of paint, a black undercoat. Once the plastic space craft was completely coated with midnight sheen, she returned the spray-gun to its place, and as if to purposefully contrast the focus and care from moments ago, burst into a full-out sprint, the automatic doors of the cabin barely opening before she slipped through them sideways and yet still managing to make this seemingly wild outburst seem deliberate and graceful.
~o~
Hannah and John had just taken their trays and deposited them in the cleaning chute when something red streaked around a corner and collided with the latter, causing him to stumble back a few steps.
"Oof!" the middle-aged engineer exclaimed as the air was driven from his lungs. A shock of deep red hair was pressed against the bottom of his jaw and a young set of arms wrapped tightly around him, trapping his arms against his body.
Just as quickly as she had wrapped herself around him, the girl detached herself again and hopped backwards a few steps, brimming with excitement. "Mission accomplished, sir! The cruiser you got me is all done but for the paintjob!"
Having recovered from the winding, John only chuckled, ruffling his daughter's hair. "That's great Eri. When the base is dried we can argue together about which colours go together best."
Eris tried to duck away from his hand as fast as possible, using her fingers to try comb out any knots and straightening it after the good-natured gesture had messed it up. "Daaad! Not the hair! You know I hate combing this…"
"Only if you stop running into me like a cannonball all the time. Why don't you shower your mother in barely contained enthusiasm sometimes?"
"Mom's always wearing that stupid armour! It hurts!"
At this both parents chuckled. Then Hannah put her hands on her daughter's shoulders, steering her to look her in the face solemnly. "Dear, we'll be arriving at Mindoir soon. Please get ready."
Eris merely nodded in response; she knew what was to come. The girl had spent all her life aboard military space-faring vessels alongside her parents. By now the battle-station protocols used by the Alliance were second nature to her.
"But first you look in awe upon my masterpiece!"
The three Shepards left to have a look at the product of the enthusiastic girl's labours, striking an odd picture aboard the otherwise spartan Systems Alliance vessel.
~o~
It had been about fifteen minutes since they had admired Eris' work when the ship-wide intercom crackled to life again.
"Twenty minutes to insertion, all hands prepare for battle-stations."
John pecked his wife on the cheek and hurried towards engineering. Hannah put her hand to where his lips had brushed her – his slight stubble scratched – with a distant look on her face. It only lasted a moment though; soon she was checking and double-checking the condition of her hardsuit and other equipment, running a diagnostic scan on her omnitool's operating system, clamping grenades to the specially designed slots on the hardsuit and re-assembling her rifle after having just finished cleaning it.
Finally she holstered the compact standard-issue pistol to the magnetized area at her hip and slipped the folded-up assault-rifle into its designated mag-lock on the back of her armour. Turning around, she saw her daughter solemnly watching her preparations. Hannah placed her hands on Eris' shoulders as before, brushing a strand of striking red hair out of the girl's verdant eyes. "Alright dear, you know what to do. Just look after your dad for me for a short bit and I'll be right back before you know it."
"You'd better…" the girl mumbled.
With that Hannah lifted her helmet from its place on the table and briskly walked out of the room, blinking furiously to keep the tears at bay. This was always the hardest part - making promises she knew she had no right to make.
~o~
"Alright lads, how's my third favourite girl in the galaxy doing?!" Chief Engineer Shepard shouted as the elevator opened and he rocketed in from the opening doors at a high-paced gait.
"Almost as great as the others, sir!" a woman whose hands were a blur over the console she was working at responded.
"Almost as pretty too," a male voice sounded from underneath the walkway.
"Watch it Collins! Both of them could whip your arse harder than I ever could!" Shepard shouted in response,then signifying an end to the levity. All kinds of system checks were being called across the room: a myriad of temperatures, fuel levels, coolant status, a whole range of details pertaining to the core and more percentages than any uneducated mind would be able to decipher.
The chief engineer took his post that overlooked the majority of the systems, screens all around him with glaring displays pertaining to almost all the systems aboard the Einstein. Crew scuttled about either bearing replacement parts, replaced parts, data pads with rows of information, or just running to some other post that needed manning. Compared to a short while ago, the ship was now as a creature out of hibernation.
~o~
Lieutenant Shepard's entry into the cargo bay was akin to that of a shark into water; a silent hunter, smoothly moving with a determined purpose. Soldiers looked up from their equipment and reflexively straightened that tiny bit more. She, however, didn't seem to notice the slight ripple-effect her arrival caused. She moved right past most of the men assembled and walked up to a pair that were busy conversing in hushed tones. Noticing her, they turned from their discussion and saluted, a greeting she returned.
"Shepard." They greeted in succession. The first was of an average - if fit - build, a pale complexion with dark hair and an angular face, seemingly of European descent. The other had slightly darker skin, powerfully built and also with black hair, he – unlike the other - had striking tribal tattoos painted on his face revealing his Māori heritage.
"Parata, Udresku," Hannah returned the greeting, nodding at each in turn, "You guys had a look at what we're heading into?"
"Yeah, not lookin' too good," Parata said in a strong South-Oceania accent, "This is the most organised and well executed raid to date. It won't be easy."
"Well, we'd best get ready then." Turning from her two fellows, she addressed the rest of the soldiers in the room. "Alright boys, tie your shoelaces and pull up your socks! We're going to school!"
