Thoughts From Andromeda
By ElementalsAdvocate
Year 2820. Andromeda Galaxy, Heleus Cluster, the Nexus, Arc Hyperion, SAM Node.
Bringing up files: Year 2819, Andromeda Galaxy, Heleus Cluster, the Nexus, Arc Hyperion, SAM Node
SAM, you recording?
{Yes, Scott.}
Ok, then.
Well… I guess I started doing these video journals because, if I didn't, I would have gone mad a long time ago.
Computer pause.
Fuck… Fuck… Fuck… What the hell am I supposed to say?
…
Yeah SAM, yes I know, but how do I start?
…
At the beginning? No shit. Alright. Computer Resume.
SAM says that the best place to start is at the beginning. Since he's usually right about stuff like this I'll just do what he says and see where it takes me.
My name is Scott Enfield Ryder. I'm twenty-three years old, not counting the six-hundred-plus years it took for the Hyperion to get to the Andromeda Galaxy. I used to be an Alliance Marine; more on that later. I'm also a natural born biotic, along with my twin sister Sara.
I got into the Andromeda Initiative by the same sort of gravity that's been pulling me into trouble since the day I was born: namely my sister Sara and my father Alec Ryder. Dad was a marine too, and not just any marine: he was one of the original N7 marines that went with Admiral Grissom through the Charon Mass Relay back in 2149. He spent his early years serving the Alliance, and then after my sister and I were born and Mom died, he went civilian to care for us. Didn't mean he was around more, just that when we got into trouble it was easier to contact him so he could look at us and tell us not to do it again. But I'm getting off track. Where was I?
Oh yeah.
Dad was a scientist then, working some pretty deep stuff in Artificial Intelligence technology. He was always smart, but after he left the Alliance he turned his considerable brain-power to creating an A.I. that could interface directly with a person's mind. Course, he never let on to folks in the Milky Way just how deeply that interface would go.
Computer pause; SAM, please delete that last bit. Thanks.Computer resume.
By that time, Dad had already been working with the Andromeda Initiative for a few years, and when the Initiative started looking for applicants for Arc Hyperion, Sara signed up right away.
Sara always was the adventurous type. Comes from being born first I suppose. She likes to raze me about it, and I throw it right back. It's an old game; a way of reminding each other that despite everything that's happened, the connection between us hasn't changed.
Just like me, Sara signed up with the Alliance. It was the thing to do, in our family at least. We'd spent so much of our early lives bouncing around the galaxy from one posting to the next, and then Dad set his lab on the Citadel, so service seemed as natural to us as breathing. Sera did it because she wanted to get out there and explore the universe. She used Dad's connections to get a posting to the Citadel in conjunction with the Prothean Studies unit, before getting sent into the Attican Traverse, while I was assigned to duty at the Relay 202 station.
Then the Eden-Prime War happened. I watched the new-feeds the same as the other marines: Eden Prime burning, the Geth leaving the Perseus Veil for the first time in three-hundred years to assault colonies and stations across the Traverse, Commander Shepard becoming the first human Spectre. For months, I watched ships go back and forth between Arcturus Station and our colonies. Over and over again, I asked for a transfer to a combat unit, but more on that later. Then, Saren's attack on the Citadel: the destruction, the cost, the thousands of lives lost, and thousands more in ruins from the Geth attack. Luckily, Sara was away from the Citadel, on Eden Prime of all places, helping peacekeeping force care for refugees while simultaneous digging in the hills for Prothean artifacts. Dad was away too, on Earth as it happens.
I can only speculate, but maybe Dad knew something was going to happen, even then. Old friends in the military, looking at the data beneath the data, a gut feeling; something that told him that things weren't going to end with Sovereign's destruction at the Citadel, and forcing the Geth Fleet back beyond the Veil. I never asked him, and now… I can't.
Computer pause.
Scott bows his head, covering his eyes with his hands, sitting quietly for several minutes.
Computer resume.
I guess he figured that I wouldn't come, even if he begged me. But, that doesn't mean he didn't set things up so I would get dragged into it, like I said. Instead, he had one of his colleagues on the Initiative contact Sara about signing up for the Pathfinder Team. Sara, like the bull-goose fool she is, took after the application like a bull after a matadors cape, and in less time than it takes to say "Bob's your uncle" she was on the team.
She phoned me after she got the news, absolutely gushing with delight, saying how Dad was so surprised that she had gotten accepted. I, of course, knew better, or thought I did.
Computer Pause: SAM, delete last- yes, thank you. Computer resume.
Sara must have known where I was in my life right then, because she sent me an application of my own. "Just think about it," she said.
I'd like to elaborate on where I was in my life at this time.
I'd signed up with the Alliance Marines, just like Dad did. I didn't do it to please him. I did it because I wanted to prove myself, to myself. Well, I went through basic training same as every other marine, then I was assigned to Arcturus Station before being transferred to the Relay 202 Defense Station. The transfer was only supposed to be temporary, three weeks max, just to get my feet wet before sending me on to a new post.
I ended up stuck in that shit-hole for two years.
Relay 202 was one of the Primary Relays to Arcturus from the Attican Traverse and the Skyllian Verge. As such, the Defense Station on one of Rigel's moons was considered one of the linchpins to the defense of Arcturus and Earth from invasion. But since the First Contact War and humanity joined the Citadel Council races and expanded into the Traverse, no one had made a concerted effort to attack or invade Alliance Space through 202. By the time I joined the Marines and was transferred there, the Skyllian Blitz was gone
See, my CO was a political coward. Once he found out I was the son of Alec Ryder, hero of the Alliance, he promptly put me on desk duty, far away from any possible danger, and any repercussions that might follow if I got hurt. Nobody and I mean nobody had ever done that to me before; at least, not since Mom died. Dad certainly never coddled me. If he thought I could do something without getting maimed or killed, he typically let me go about my business, and then made certain I endured the consequences.
When the Eden Prime War broke out, I had a front row seat to see all the ships heading into the Traverse to fight, while I was stuck dirt-side. While my buddies from boot camp were earning their stripes fighting the geth, defending the Alliance, giving their lives for humanity, I was stuck shuffling paper, moving crates, running security sweeps, and busting the occasional smuggler.
When people asked me where I was when the Citadel was attacked by the Geth, I answer: "I was at my desk, running a diagnostic on the sensor platforms, safe and sound." When people asked me where I was when it was announced that Commander Shepard had been killed and the Normandy destroyed, I have to say: "I was filing a report in triplicate for my commander on the retrofits for the shower in the barracks."
Computer pause.
Fuck. That still pisses me off.
{Do you want to stop?}
No SAM. Just give me a second. Okay, Computer resume.
Anyway, by the time Sara sent word that she had been accepted into the Andromeda Initiative, I was ready for a change. My three-year service was almost up anyway. I applied to the Initiative, and within a week I got word that I was accepted into the program. When my service contract finally came up, I left my CO with a little present: A bag of his favorite coffee beans, laced with a powerful diuretic. I can still remember the sound of his screams as he bolted for the head before I headed for the shuttle. I never asked him for a reference. I never will.
Computer pause.
No Sam, I didn't hat the guy. I detested him. He took two years of my life and held me like I was some kind of nuke that would go off if he let anything jar me. He ruined my chance as a Marine. I just ruined his day. Far as I'm concerned, he got what he deserved.
Computer resume.
Sara and I were both classified by the Initiative as "Recon Specialists". Basically we're scouts, equipped with cutting-edge top-of-the-line omni-tools and scanners that make the stuff the N7's get look like something dug out of the bottom of a bargain bin. I spent the next six weeks before Arc Hyperion was ready to leave running drills and simulations, getting acquainted with what we could expect once we got to Andromeda. Which, as it turned out was "We really have no idea. We just prepare as best we can and then get on with it." I especially enjoyed learning my way around the new "jump-jets". Extreme parkour doesn't do it justice.
I spent most of my off-duty hours with Sara. Dad was too busy to talk most days, in and out of meetings with the Initiatives directors, and putting the finishing touches to SAM before we left. Though we were on the Pathfinder Team, we didn't actually get to meet the other members until just before Hyperion left. Security concerns. Didn't want too many people to find out who was involved and possibly slip a stowaway or saboteur onboard.
As part of the Pathfinder team, we were one of the last groups to be put into our cryo-pods. I remember… just before Sara and I went into the Med-bay, we were in one of the observation lounges, taking one last look at Earth. Hyperion was in the earth shadow, away from the sun, so we could see all of Europe, North Africa, the Atlantic Ocean, and eastern North America, all lit up bright as could be so we could identify them just by tracing the shapes of the lights against the black of the seas.
"Just think: six hundred years ago, the nations of Europe had only just realized that there was another continent across the Atlantic, waiting to be explored. The best way to get there was by ship, and the only way to navigate was by the stars."
"Some things never change then," Sara quipped, and we laughed. Then the doctors called us over the intercom, and we got up to leave. Just before we left, I heard Sara whisper to the lights below us, "Bye, Mom."
Fuck. It still hurts to think about. Fuck it; I can't do any more SAM. Maybe later, okay. Need to think. On my own; just- don't say anything, okay?
Scott Ryder exits the Node in distress.
End Recording.