Captain Cutter lay sprawled out on the floor of the bridge, and slowly got up from where he was thrown as the Spirit of Fire was hit as they exited the slipspace disturbance. "What the hell was that?" Cutter coughed out, tasting blood and feeling a sharp pain in his chest that felt suspiciously like a cracked rib.

"We appear to have exited the slipspace rupture, sir, and a ship collided with us as soon as we came out." Serina replied matter-of-factly.

"Covenant?" asked the captain.

"Uh, no sir, it was unlike anything we've seen before, including that dyson sphere we just destroyed."

"That might be a problem, could have been the only friendly alien race we'll ever see, and we just crashed right into them." Cutter shook his head and sighed. "Are we near any planets?"

"Yes sir, we're actually very close to what looks like a population center, scanning… population, wait, that can't be right." Serina's avatar looked confused.

"What is it Serina?" His concern leaked into his voice as he spoke.

"It appears to be only about fifty, sir" Serina said after a few seconds.

"Does it look like they were glassed?" Cutter replied.

"No, the buildings all just look very old, like ancient ruins. I'm only detecting life near a small settlement that looks, well, newer than the rest, there are only about fifty infrared signatures, I couldn't tell if there are any more in the lower levels. If I had to guess, this looks like an archeological dig site." Serina suddenly looked startled. "Captain, you had better take a look at this."

Cutter walked over to the video display in the corner of his bridge. "A ship Serina?"

"Aye sir, markings are in English, how odd, I've never seen a ship like that before." Serina looked genuinely puzzled.

"Could it be a separatist colony?" Cutter stared at the ship in the view screen, making out the words, SSV Normandy. "Normandy? It appears to be named after the battle of Normandy of Earth history."

"I can't contact them, our transmitter was destroyed in the fight with that covenant destroyer in the shield world."

Cutter turned back to the holographic pedestal on which Serina stood. "That's unfortunate, and we might have just run into friends of theirs, start waking up the crew, start with red team, we'll most likely need them."

"Commander, we have boarders!" Serina suddenly yelled.

"Show me." A holo table lit up near the captain showing the spirit of fire, with one red patch where the other human ship had taken up position, and apparently dropped a small team, which he saw on one of the overhead monitors, apparently only about four soldiers had landed, they appeared heavily armed but did not carry their weapons out in their hands. "They must think we're a derelict." What about the other group?"

"That's a bit more interesting. They definitely aren't human, and they are definitely hostile, they seem to be coming from where that ship impacted us." Another screen started up, it showed sinuous bipedal creatures with inward bent legs and extended necks with single glowing eyes at the end.

"Tell red team to get to where these aliens are, and repel boarders. As far as those humans go, see if you can make contact with them if they get inside, place a priority on waking up the ODSTs after the Spartans, We can't jump away, we might have to defend this ship." The captain sat down in his chair. "Seal as many doors as you can, I don't want people running around my ship without my permission."

***

Commander Sheppard touched down on the deck of the massive dreadnaught," no, carrier", he thought. The markings on the side of the ship were clearly visible under his boots. "If they follow the same naming conventions as we do, and seeing as how no one's seen a ship like this before that isn't a given anymore."

"Look at that blast damage," Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, the Quarian, interrupted his reverie. "It looks almost like close range guardian laser damage, definitely not caused by the Geth ship." The alien paused a moment to examine the battle scaring around them. "It looks like whoever they were fighting was targeting those turrets," Tali raised her hand to point at what were obviously once turrets, before something had melted through them.

"If those are the size of their guardian lasers, let's hope we don't run into whoever shot at this ship," Ashley remarked. The tough marine and lieutenant Alenko made up the rest of the exploratory squad that Sheppard had led to the derelict.

"Enough gawking, let's see if we can find a way into this thing." Sheppard started walking, letting the rest of his team fall in behind.

"Over here sir," Kaiden's voice came over the radio. "It looks like an airlock at least."

The lieutenant stood near a doorway on the side of the ship, it was a large hatch, nearly ten feet across in a square, yellow and black stripes ringed the doorway.

"This is getting weirder and weirder, this ship is completely unknown to humanity as we know it, and yet it has more recognizably human markings than the Normandy." Sheppard shook his head as he inspected the hatch.

"The Normandy is a joint project between human's and turians, if this is a solely human ship that would make sense," Tali interjected helpfully.

"Can you open the hatch, or are you just going to talk all day long?" Williams said, hands on her hips, an annoyed expression on her face.

Tali turned to the door, and managing to sound indignant through her translator, "Yes, just a moment, it shouldn't take long." The young quarian's omnitool began to glow orange as she attempted to connect to the systems controlling the hatch. "That's odd… the computer system here is completely different than the one on the Normandy, and it seems unusually secure. This might t-" she jumped back suddenly as the airlock opened. "I didn't expect that to work so quickly."

"Well, we have access, let's go inside, see why this thing is here, and if anyone is left inside." Sheppard stepped inside the hatch and was vaguely surprised to find artificial gravity was present and active.

The team entered the airlock and waited for it to cycle before stepping inside, their weapons held at the ready, not seeing anything but empty corridors the team began walking down the large middle one, which appeared to have some sort of freight conveyance system running down the length of it.

"All the lights are off, looks like nobody's home after all" Ashley murmured.

"Or nobody made it through whatever this ship came out of," Kaiden replied somberly.

"Yeah, there's a cheery thought," Ashley shivered a little, it had nothing to do with the cold interior of the ship.

"Quit spooking yourself marines, we've got a mystery to solve here," Sheppard tried pressing a few controls on one of the many doors lining the corridor, to no success.

"That sounded just like the cheesy books my little sister used to read when we were kids, sir" Ashley smiled and shook off the nervous feeling the ship gave her.

"Sheppard, over here!" Tali sounded a little panicked and had her shotgun trained inside a doorway that appeared to have been blown open, recently too.

The team hurried over to where the Quarian stood, and all of them drew their weapons and began looking around, the reason was apparent. Geth bodies laid all over what looked like a break room, complete with vending machines, several Geth troopers were strewn about the entrance, gun wounds that looked like they came from similar weapons to the one's Sheppard's team carried riddled the machine corpses.

However, in the center of the room lay the corpse of a titanic Geth destroyer, it's arm appear to have been ripped from its socket, and a massive hole seemed to have been blasted through its chest.

"Its gun is missing," Kaiden stated bluntly, "so are two of the trooper's weapons."

"Look sir, I recognize these!" Ashley held up a small round cylinder, open at one end, and closed at the other. "It's a shell casing, like from old Earth rifles before the discovery of the Prothean ruins on mars, my dad was a collector."

"I'd bet that whatever took down these Geth picked up their guns, old weapons like that do almost nothing to a shielded opponent." Kaiden walked over to the corpse of the Destroyer. "I don't know how they brought this guy down though, heavy weapons maybe? I don't see any other bodies, or blood for that matter, you'd think the Geth would have killed someone if they were using such primitive weapons."

"That means we aren't alone here, and it's not just the Geth we have to worry about." Sheppard looked around the area holding his pistol at the ready.

An electronic sizzling sound came from one of the walls behind the small squad. As they wheeled, they saw a small pedestal swirl with holographic light. Until a small image of a woman appeared above the platform. "You're definitely right about that."