Woot! Second story here! I'ma do another crossover. This is one of your basic W40k and ME mixes, but no Space Marines here. I hope you enjoy! You may notice, but my inspiration for this was Ursakar's "The mission stays the same". I'll try to write it differently...though I kinda like the idea of a human and an Eldar together in ME too much to pass up...sorry?

Going from ME1 on this one.

Lieutenant Commander Alexis M. Shepard- Female, Sentinel, Paragon, Earthborn, and Sole Survivor

The actually crossover will probably go down in 2 chapters at this rate.

Disclaimer: Warhammer 40k and the Mass Effect trilogy are both owned by their respective companies, which I have no stock in. In other words, I own none of this. Not even the OCs, damn you idiosyncrasies.

"Dammit, if this is a joke..."

"You mean to tell me that is why we're here?"

"There is only one of them? What happened to the Battlefleet?"

"Shit. The southern hemisphere is burning."

"Inquisitor. Exterminatus is almost definitely required here."

"You know we cannot! The artifact is too important!"

"Your inquisitor is correct, you must retrieve the artifact."

"Shut the hell up! Inquisitor, even if there is the Sword of Achesh here, why should we spare this Tau world the destruction it deserves?"

"Because, Shipmaster, Farseer Elain is correct in more way then one. You know that Exterminatus would not be enough to kill The Fateweaver. We need her people's help and the aid of the holy blade in equal measure."

"Still..."

"Enough! Farseer, ready your retinue. I will leave the battle in space to you, Shipmaster."

"Yes, my lord..."

"They are ready, Inquisitor."

"Good."

Inquisitor Alexis Mons sat in the back of a Valkyrie and contemplated life. At least, that's what he would tell anyone who asked him at that moment. In truth, he was scanning the minds of his newly-acquired retinue.

He had only just acquired most of them from the hive-world of Pyrus IV. Rheins used to be a part of the PDF of the second hive...before the others were sacrificed to the Chaos Gods. Mylisa had been a latent psyker working for one of the noble houses as...well as a whore, for lack of a better word, before he had butchered the family for its Slaaneshite connections. The brother-sister pair, Hyde and Grace, had been a part of a gang he had manipulated into attacking the ritual site. They were the only two to survive. Felix was a Ratling that had succeeded in killing Alexis's last sniper and had almost killed the Inquisitor himself before Alexis had reduced him to unconsciousness. He was so impressive that the inquisitor had taken him under his wing. Only Samantha had accompanied Alexis since the beginning. The red-headed Cadian had been a former servant of Alexis's mentor and had been the only survivor of a failed attack on a certain noble's alien-ridden estate 5 years prior other than Alexis himself.

Alexis got just what he expected from the group.

Rheins was a seething pit of anger and mistrust, most of it directed at the planet below and the alien vessel that flanked the Valkyrie. Mylisa was a shell of nervousness surrounding a core of rigid faith and conviction (the only thing that had kept her from falling to daemons for all the years of her life prior). The twins matched each other with the sheer mass of bloodlust they held. However, Hyde's was like a hammer and Grace's was a blade. Felix's mind sensed his intrusion and he promptly blocked out the inquisitor. Alexis did not probe further into the mutant's mind. And Samantha, Samantha's mind was a sea of utter calm, a vast illusion that covered a core of strength, ready to stab out at any foreign attempt to end her or her friends.

All of the retinue felt the brush of the Inquisitor's mind and the chilling of the air that came with it. They all glanced over at the Inquisitor, whose eyes were rolled back into his head. After a moment The inquisitor's eyes rolled forward with a snap and he was grinning. He glanced around the room, his eyes landing on the Ratling. The mutant met his gaze and the Inquisitor laughed before turning to the others.

He lost his insane smile and simply smirked before saying, calmly and evenly,"The Fateweaver will be held by my and the Farseer's psychic powers. Meanwhile, one of you, preferable Grace or Hyde, will grab the relic and slay the daemon. I know you are uncomfortable with the fact of working with aliens, but I for one am much more comfortable working with the threat without than falling to the threat within," he paused for a moment,"Is that understood, Rheins?" Alexis then looked at the former-PDF, who nodded and gripped his gun tighter, more of his hatred being diverted to the planet below. The inquisitor then continued, his piercing blue eyes shining from beneath his raven hair scrutinizing every other occupant," If their are Tau survivors, we will attempt to appeal to their sense of the so-called "Greater Good" and manipulate them into aiding us as fodder. If I die then, Samantha, I want you to get Mylisa and as many others back to the ship before Exterminatus is called, it may not be enough to kill the daemon, but it should slow it long enough for a Grey Knights' strike team to be sent."

Samantha simply nodded as the pilot came over the vox and announced,"ETA in 5, master. There appears to be a firefight 2 klicks east-northeast of the landing zone. They are in our way."

Alexis simply nods, pulling out a plasma pistol he had won from the body of a demented Tech-magi, and activated it. When the blue glow of the ancient weapon finally washes over the crew section, the Inquisitor looks back up, a wolfish grin on his face. He turns to the vox and says to the pilot,"Change the landing site. Drop us on top of them."

The rest of the retinue glanced over at the inquisitor. However, once they saw his wolfish smile, sighed and went back to preparing their weapons. The pilot, after a moment of pause, replied,"Yes, my lord."

There was a shaking as the Valkyrie banked more eastward and increased speed. After a moment, pings began to ring off the hull as airborne daemons and AA fire slammed in to the metal. The pilot yells out before a terrible screech sounds through the vehicle before in went into a massive tailspin. After a moment, with the screech of grinding metal, the Valkyrie slammed into the ground, shaking the retinue about violently in their harnesses.

Alexis did not bother to check the cockpit for survivors, the red glow on the metal separating the chambers was enough evidence for him. He glanced over to when the rest of the retinue was shaking itself free of their harnesses and he slammed his hand into a switch next to his, releasing him. Him swiftly stood up and swung over to the back of the holding area, grabbing a lever. With a quick pull as soon as Samantha patted his shoulder, the back of the area blasted open and corrupt light spilled into the metal carcass of the Valkyrie.

The group swiftly fanned out from the vehicle and set up a perimeter. Almost immediately, the Eldar vessel came to be hovering overhead and the xeno strike team descending into their ranks. After a short discussion between the Farseer and the Alexis, The entire group set off at a jog towards the fighting a few hundred meters away.

Fire Warrior Shas'ui Vior'la Mont'yr and his squad loosed another volley into the warp abominations that had appeared only moments ago. The creatures of madness dissolved into pools of so much concentrated wrongness and revealed the fallen Tau auxiliaries just beyond them. The Vespid, Kroot, and humans charged his position and, yet again, twelve streams of ionized fire slammed into the force, cutting through those with little to no armor and burning those who did have it to death.

Suddenly, a Greater Knarloc reared its head from behind the groups of fallen and charged the line of Tau Fire Warriors. It simply crushed the fallen body of an XV88 battlesuit and promptly ate one of Mont'yr's soldiers. As he began to redirect his fire, the grand beast's right side swiftly became a shredded bloody hulk.

The Shas'ui looked over to see the rarely-seen helmets of the Eldar. Then, even more surprisingly, a group of humans also crested the hill on that side and began to fire down into the horde. A human in the group, wearing an elaborate cape and vest, lifted a blue-shining weapon and, almost casually, shot into the weakened side of the Greater Knarloc, burning a hole nearly all the way through. It howled briefly in agony before falling over and crushing a mad cluster of men.

The fire team paused for half a second, a horrible flaw in discipline, before resuming the barrage in earnest. The crossfire swiftly proved to be too much for the heretics and they withered under holy fire.

Soon the various races had met in the shadow of the fallen monster. The humans other than the inquisitor set up a perimeter and Felix set up a sniping position. Soon enough, the Inquisitor and the Farseer had explained the situation to the hyper-advanced xenos.

Mont'yr, for the first time in his life, found himself both serving the Greater Good and fighting alongside humanity's Imperial forces. He had fought with mercenaries, of course, but never representatives of their central government. And to think, they had come here( with the enigmatic Eldar no less!) just to kill a single daemon on the planet. Granted, this daemon had managed to corrupt nearly all non-Tau forces on the planet and was slowly turning the planet into a Chaos world, but such encounters were so rare between the Tau and Daemons that it was all somewhat surreal to the followers of the Greater Good. Hell had descended on their planet, and now the most unlikely of allies had arrived to send it packing.

Whew...well, my writing failed a bit there in the end, but oh well. What do you guys think? Good? Bad? Confusing? All of the above? Ah, and daemons can't corrupt the Tau themselves...something about the way they live and travel through the warp keeps it from happening. At any rate. the crossover will probably happen in...eh 2 chapters? Please stay tuned!