Chapter One
Knockout At Amada
"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant
and fill him with a terrible resolve..."
Unsubstantiated quote attributed to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
after the Pearl Harbor attack
Several weeks after the Battle of the Citadel
The red super-giant Anadius was a minor footnote on the star maps of the Horsehead Nebula: a cold, dying star of about twenty solar masses and fifteen hundred times Sol's radius. There were only three objects larger than an asteroid clustered in the slowly burning out star. The first was a gas giant only slightly smaller than Jupiter just inside the outer rim of the system's oort cloud with several core discharge anchorages and Helium 3 processing plants carefully and skillfully hidden in its rings.
The second was a small planet who's orbit sat squarely within the so called "sweet spot" to produce a garden world, though now little more than a frozen, burned out cinder and not due to Anadius' decline, either. The planet bore the scars of orbital mass driver bombardment, its former inhabitants a long forgotten victim of the reapers. Their civilization wiped out before mammals had supplanted the dinosaurs on Earth, by the carbon dating of the few remaining ruins on the surface.
The third was an unobtrusive, heavily shielded space station floating in geosynchronous orbit of the star roughly halfway between the dead world and the star's corona. Not listed on any charts, its existence in the inner reaches of the system was imperceptible to sensor sweeps of the cluster due to the star's periodic bursts of solar output. Though it didn't appear to be much more than a smuggler's outpost to look at it, the station bore enough docking hard-points for multiple large and small vessels and was was lavishly appointed on the inside. The perfect place to hide from the prying eyes of the Citadel Council and the Terran Systems Alliance from which it's builders sprang.
This was Cronos Station, the secret headquarters of Cerberus.
In the primary office of Cerberus' founder, Mason Wood, known more widely to the galaxy-at-large as "The Illusive Man". Since publishing an anonymous manifesto shortly after the Contact War warning that an alien attempt at human genocide was inevitable. His manifesto had called for an army - a Cerberus - to guard against invasion through the Charon relay and he had spent the last quarter century slowly building it. Soon, he believed, his efforts – many of which had caused Cerberus to be branded a terrorist and seditionist organization by authorities – would be vindicated.
As he sat in his chair in the center of a room covered on all sides by a holo-projected display of the red super-giant where he would often contemplate the universe and his place in it, a woman in her mid-thirties named Miranda Lawson turned from the display.
"Captain Beckett did everything right," she stated flatly, her disgust with the Citadel Council clearly evident, "more than we could have hoped for - saving the Citadel, even saving the council! Humanity has the trust of nearly the entire galaxy and still it's not enough to get the three of them in their ivory tower to listen!"
"We're at war," Wood agreed, "no one wants to admit it, but humanity is under attack"
Wood continued to contemplate the supernova, considering his next words with great care. Miranda Lawson was a driven woman, but much more of an idealist than he had ever been. She was a true believer, willing to overlook many of Cerberus' sins to bring about its more laudable goals, one of the few he had recruited who wasn't a xenophobe.
She was one of his best agents- if not the best in his employ - but the one he also kept the most often at arm's length. Though she was beautiful by every human standard available and clearly his type, he had no intention of letting her get that close to him. She was far too intelligent and perceptive for him to keep in the dark for long under such close scrutiny. The very things that made her one of his most successful agents also made her dangerous to him and Cerberus as a whole. He could not risk her disillusionment with the organization that would follow if he let her any deeper into his inner circle, something she would invariably seek should they become intimate. She was too valuable an asset, both as an agent of Cerberus and as a bargaining chip with her father, Henry Lawson.
Were she ever to discover that he still had dealings with the abusive father she had fled from, or that the very project that had led to both her and her younger sister's creation as well as her extensive genetic tailoring had come from Cerberus labs on this very station and elsewhere, her reprisal would be predictably direct and highly destructive. She would lose of course, but even in defeat she could set Cerberus' long term goals back decades.
"Our sacrifices have earned the council's gratitude," he replied coolly, "but Captain Beckett, herself remains our best hope."
Miranda strode closer, the skin-tight jumpsuit she favored accentuating every curve and movement of her genetically perfect body, her ire unabated.
"But they're sending her to fight geth!" she spat, her Australian accent growing thicker as she gave vent to her rage. "Geth! We both know they're not the real threat. The Reapers are still out there in force."
"True," Wood agreed, after taking a drag of his cigarette followed by a sip of his expensive Kentucky Bourbon, "which means it will be up to us to stop them."
Miranda paced, every muscle in her genetically perfect body a riot of tension. She had little time for fools, nor did she suffer them gladly and the council were the galaxy's biggest fools as far as she was concerned.
"The Council will never trust Cerberus, we've been disavowed as a terrorist organization even by our own government," she replied, sounding a bit more contrite. "Even after everything humanity has accomplished, they'll never accept our help. But Beckett? They'll follow her. She's a hero, a bloody icon, but she's only one woman, if we were to lose her humanity might well follow."
Mason Wood put out his cigarette and waved his now empty fingers in the air in front of his chair, calling up a small haptic interface as he checked assets and possible locations, barely glancing at the information at his disposal before replying.
"Then see to it that we don't lose her."
Six months after the devastating attack on the Citadel, the galactic community has struggled to rebuild. The Alliance Fleet made a tremendous sacrifice to save the Citadel Council which earned humanity membership in their prestigious group. They were forced to respond to evidence that the Reapers - enormous machines that eradicate all organic civilization every fifty thousand years – not only exist, but seek to return to to the inhabited regions of the galaxy.
To quell the rumors, the Council has sent Captain Beckett and the crew of SSV Normandy to wipe out any pockets of geth resistance in accordance with the official stance they and their leader, the rogue Spectre, Saren Arterius were solely responsible for the attack.
But for those who knew the truth, the search for answers had only just begun.
Amada System, in the Omega Nebula
SSV Normandy burst out of FTL in the Amada system within visual range of the planet Alchera. As her wings slowly unfolded, her heat sinks became active and her heat signature began to dwindle until it was no longer distinguishable from the empty space around her then began a slow search pattern of the system with passive LIDAR scans.
"Secured from FTL, IES system engaged, emission sinks active," Flight Lt. Kevin Ryan reported from the Normandy's cockpit. "Board is green, we are running silent."
"We're wasting our time," XO Pressly grumbled through the intercom whilst checking the young ensign's work at the LIDAR console. "Four days searching every system in this sector and there still isn't any sign of geth activity."
"Three ships went missing in this cluster in the last month," Ryan replied without any real conviction. "Something happened to 'em."
"My money's on slavers," Pressly replied, his eyes scanning the CIC, crew training was the XO's job, milk run or not. "The Terminus Systems are crawling with 'em."
The stops in every system in the cluster had become routine almost to the point of boredom. Nobody on the ship - from Captain Beckett down to the lowliest rating - doubted for a moment that it was a
milk run to remove them from the public eye while the non-human members of the Council sought to distance themselves from the truth of the Reaper threat. Captain Beckett rarely turned up in the CIC, content to leave the day-to-day operations to XO Pressly. It was public knowledge aboard ship that he was being groomed for his own command and that this would be his last tour aboard.
His actions as nominal commander of the Normandy during the Battle of the Citadel had garnered him the attention of the Alliance brass and word had come down that when the new SSV Thermopylae finished construction and was ready for shakedown he would be in the Captain's seat.
Lt. Commander Esposito had transferred out and returned to the CID before Normandy had departed Alliance space, leaving First Lt. Castle as the next in line for XO, a position that Captain Beckett was clearly more interested in grooming him for. In fact, she was grooming him for it a lot lately in her quarters (another of the ship's open secrets).
Shortly before he resigned his commission to take his place as the human representative to the Citadel Council, Captain Roy Montgomery had personally conducted their wedding in the Normandy's CIC.
Though it was generally frowned upon for a Captain and XO to be intimate, not to mention married to each other, Captain Beckett's Council Spectre status rendered her an exception, one that Alliance High Command had not been terribly happy about. Likely another reason the Normandy had been sent to the ass end of nowhere searching for heretofore non-existent geth.
"Picking up something on the long range sensors," the young ensign at the LIDAR console called out, "unknown configuration, size indicates a cruiser."
"Doesn't match any known signatures," Ryan added.
"Cruiser is changing course," the ensign reported, "now on an intercept trajectory."
"Can't be, Stealth systems are engaged," Pressly replied, covering the distance to the LIDAR console in four long strides to look over the ensign's shoulder, "There's no way a geth ship could possibly..."
As the alien looking cruiser closed the range with the Normandy, the main gun at the center of its hull powered up.
"It's not the geth!" Ryan exclaimed as he engaged the manual override on the helm just as the unknown vessel locked them on target. "Brace for evasive maneuvers!"
Ryan's "Crazy Ivan" maneuvers dodged the opening salvo of the hostile ship's strange energy beam weapon, but only briefly, before the massive cruiser found the range and swept around. The next round of fire connected, and sheared the Normandy's starboard wing in half just inboard of the number four engine.
In the CIC, the primary LIDAR console exploded in Pressly's face, killing him and the young ensign seated in front of him instantly. As ranking officer on the deck, Ryan took over without skipping a beat.
"Kinetic barriers out, multiple hull breaches, weapons offline, somebody get that fire out!" he shouted all while trying to get the wounded Normandy's helm to answer properly with half of the maneuvering thrusters out.
The enemy cruiser fired again and again, hammering at the Normandy, cutting through her armor and the hull beneath it like a hot knife through butter. The next salvo knocked out the Tantalus drive core and the FTL drive, then targeted the dorsal hull and opened fire, breaching the CIC and opening the deck to space, killing everyone inside, leaving Ryan trapped behind the emergency barriers in the flying bridge, struggling to keep the Normandy alive.
Down on the crew deck, Kate brought the emergency command console online and primed the distress beacon for launch before giving the abandon ship order. Shortly afterward the Normandy's VI began to drone.
"Abandon ship, Abandon ship. All hands report to the escape pods."
"Ryan's still in the cockpit," Castle reported. "He's refusing to evacuate."
"I'm not leaving either," Liara T'Soni stated from behind them.
"Get to the damn escape pods, T'Soni!" Kate commanded, "Castle and I will haul Ryan's crippled ass out of here! Go!"
Liara nodded and turned to run down the corridor. Outside the ship, a section of the hull's armor plate popped open and slid down, revealing the escape pod launch cradles and one by one each of the seven port side pods ejected and their thrusters powered them clear of the ship. The enemy vessel ignored them and continued to fire on the dying hulk of SSV Normandy, as Castle and Beckett sealed their combat armor and breathing helmets and began climbing the stairs they could hear him sending the distress call.
"Mayday, mayday, this is SSV Normandy, we are under attack by an unidentified vessel, taking heavy damage!"
The two of them engaged their mag boots, Castle overrode the door and they stepped out into the shattered CIC, the gaping hole where the dorsal hull had once been giving them an unobstructed view of Alchera moving inexorably closer in spite of Ryan's vain efforts to correct her course. Once they passed through the emergency barrier keeping the atmosphere in the cockpit, they could see Ryan's hands flying over the controls, muttering quietly to the ship as if begging it not to succumb to the horrible punishment being dished out by the cruiser, which had momentarily ceased fire.
"Come on, Ryan," Castle shouted, "we need to get out of here!"
"No!" Ryan shouted, his eyes flashing on a nightmare only he can see, the fires burning on a different ship in a different time, "I won't abandon her... not this time! I can still save her!"
"The Normandy's dead!" Kate shouted, trying to bring Ryan back to the moment. "Just like we will be if we don't get the hell out of here!"
"No... we just have to..." Ryan countered, his conviction unwavering until a small screen pinged for his attention. "Oh, no."
"What is it?" Castle asked.
"They're wheeling around for another attack run," Ryan replied like an oracle proclaiming their doom.
The alien cruiser slowly swung it's bow around until its main gun was once again lined up with the fatally crippled Normandy and opened fire, scoring critical hits to the already buckled hull plates just aft of the CIC, setting off a chain reaction of secondary explosions throughout the ship. It's second salvo again penetrated the hull to burn though hull armor and deck plates perilously close to the primary torpedo magazine. With most of the internal hull struts compromised, there was no chance that she would survive when they detonated.
Without preamble, Kate turned and hauled Ryan out of the pilot's seat, manhandling him toward the hatch for the flying bridge escape pod.
"Arrgh!" Ryan shouted as Castle joined her, taking some of the load. "Watch the knee!"
They had just managed to get Ryan into the pod before a series of secondary explosions wracked the ship as one by one, the torpedo warheads in the magazine reached critical mass and exploded.
Castle was thrown into the pod, but Kate was dragged into the opposite direction when her mag boots failed. He reached for her, his fingers lightly brushing hers before the next explosion flash decompressed the cockpit and she was dragged out of reach before he could close his hand around hers.
Just before she was blown clear of the CIC, she managed to hit the override to the pod and the door cycled closed.
"Kate!" Castle screamed and pounded on the airlock door as the pod launched. "Kate! NO!"
Shortly after the escape pod blasted clear, the last of the Normandy's torpedoes exploded and the ship began to break apart, which Kate watched with morbid fascination as she floated clear. Until the air hose regulators on the back of her suit gave way, taking her air with them.
She struggled and twisted as she tried in vain to reach the damaged regulator, but by the time the suit seals clamped down she was left with only the few gasps of air left inside her helmet, began to feel the effects of oxygen deprivation and her vision began to tunnel and gray out.
The last thing she heard before everything went black was the voice of her husband which made her smile weakly in spite of herself.
"Kate! I love you. I love you Kate!"
Three Weeks Later
In another quiet backwater system floated another nondescript space station where no space station had any right to be, Miranda Lawson sat at her desk in a spartan office, read the manifest of the latest transport to visit her research outpost, then activated the quantum entanglement communicator to give her report to the Illusive man.
"Captain Beckett has been recovered. The Lazarus Project will proceed as planned."
**Author's Note** My fellow Mass Effect fans know precisely where this is going. For my fellow Castle fans who are shaking their heads or forming ranks with pitchforks and torches, my only defense is in the title, "Knockout." We all know what comes next, and yes the next one will contain the word "Rise". Bear with me.
In case the references were not enough, today is December 7th. On this date on a sunny Sunday morning in 1941, the Japanese Imperial Navy launched a devastating air attack on the US Pacific Fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor.
Honor the Fallen.
