"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before."- Edger Allen Poe, human poet
Shan-Xi, Abandoned Human Colony
"Guardian, Guardian, eyes up Guardian." A voice spoke.
She spasmed in agony, like someone had set her insides on fire. "Wha?" She sputtered out, her eyes snapped around swallowing the ruined landscape. There was a wall of concrete and decaying steel half a hundred feet high, stretching out to the horizon. Rusted cars piled bumper to bumper surrounded her. A floating ball hovered by her face.
"It worked… you're alive!" the floating ball said, "You don't know how long I've been looking for you."
"Where am I?" She asked rising to her feet, "and what are you?" she reached out and touched the drone. It was solid, but she had no trouble gently pushing it through the air.
"Listen Guardian," the ball said, "I'm a Ghost. Actually, now I'm your Ghost. And you… well you've been dead a long time. So you're going to see a lot of things you don't understand. This is dangerous territory, we aren't safe here. We need to move Guardian." For a moment she stood there, then the genuine worry in the ghost's voice finally reached her. She ran. No she didn't run, her cloudy mind provided flashes of running, a young girl weaving across a field, endless circles around a track. That isn't how she ran now. She RAN, she ran like the lovechild of a sprinter and gymnast, in seconds she cleared over a hundred yards of rusted cars, not losing a step as she darted around or leaped over them. She hurdled upward, an impossible leap, catching a rail and with one hand hauling herself to the third floor. Without pause she sprinted into the monolithic structure.
It wasn't exhaustion that slowed her. Her breath didn't hitch; her legs didn't scream in agony, her lungs weren't on fire. It was darkness that halted her flight. The building was a ruin, rusted, and falling apart. Not a place for haste. The Ghost… her Ghost activated some kind of headlight program, illuminating the area in front of her.
"So… What's a ghost?" Shepard asked stepping around a puddle.
"Okay," her ghost hovered after her, staying near her shoulder. "I was born when the Traveler died, and I've spent centuries looking for you, my Guardian, to help save humanity from the Darkness."
"I don't know what that means." There was a haze in her mind, a shrouded fog blocking details of her past. There were images, indistinct, a moon made of metal hovering over a red world, some techno-monster tentacled and menacing, dragons darkening the sky, screaming and pain, blaring horns, the crush of metal. "I don't know what that means," she said again, shaking her head to clear the images. The Ghost… her Ghost floated down, near her face, and its eye made it look… sad? Confused?
"Guardian, I know it's a lot to take in and that you're confused. I promise that I can fill you in on everything but right now we have to get away."
"Who are we running from?" She asked.
"I'm not sure. They arrived in orbit a few months ago. Just a single ship. Now there're thousands in the system and they're looting all over the colony." Her Ghost answered.
"How do you know they're dangerous?"
"A few reasons. The aliens out there aren't a team of scientists or explorers. They aren't studying our technology or trying to learn about humanity. They're looting, ripping apart machines, violating the graves of the humans who died here to scavenge trinkets. It doesn't paint a pretty picture. Plus we've encountered alien races before and it never ends well. The Cabal war machine is inexhaustible. The Hive are… evil. I've even heard rumors about a race of machines. Some kind of synthetic consensus. We've started calling them the Vexx but we don't really know anything about them."
"We?" She asked growing frustrated. There was so much she didn't know, couldn't remember, every answer from the ghost left her more confused.
The passages seemed to be growing darker, swallowing the paltry light of her ghost. She could hear the echoes of the others moving. Clanking of pipes, thumping of armored boots on rusting metal, braying of alien voices echoing in the gloom.
"The Tower," her Ghost said, "Its where the other guardians live. The last hope of humanity and the Traveler. If we escape Guardian we'll be welcome there."
"Stop calling me Guardian. I have a name." There was an awkward pause as she worked her way under a partially collapsed wall. Crawling and squeezing her way through an opening in the rubble.
"What's your name?" Her Ghost asked.
"Oh sorry," she said "Its…" her mouth moved but no sound came. She strained trying to push through the fog in her head, only to find her faulty memories failing. "I…I can't remember. I don't know who I am."
"If I could make a suggestion. You have the word Shepard tattooed on your arm." She stopped to examine her arm. There it was, a bold, crimson heart with Shepard engraved across it. When she looked at it she had memories of a man's face. Strong jawed with very short cut hair. Somehow she knew it wasn't her name. Still, the face wasn't an unpleasant one and she did need a name. "Yeah, alright, I'm Shepard, nice to meet you… uh, what do I call you?"
"Ghost."
"You need a name." She said with a glare to the eyeball. Its shell rotated around making it look befuddled, then thoughtful.
"Shepard's Ghost?" It said tentatively.
"No." She deadpanned. "Something personnel. Something you."
"Like what?" Her Ghost asked. Shepard put her hand on her chin.
"Anything really. Alfred, Data, Dinklebot, Nolan North, Navigator Pressly, Charlie Young, River…" She listed off a litany of names pulled from…somewhere.
"Very well, I am Navigator Pressly." The newly dubbed Navigator Pressly stated.
"Wait, we can do better than that."
"Too late. I am Navigator Pressly." Pressly insisted. Shepard sighed.
"All right then Navigator Pressly, how do we get out of -!" Shepard's sentence transmuted into a shout of alarm as one of the aliens leapt around a corner, braying in its bizarre language. It was humanoid, lanky, and somewhat short. Its knees reversed like a birds and it had a violet tint to the faceplate on its helmet, but it didn't conceal the alien's sinister glowing eyes. But it was the gun that got her undivided attention. It was a monster of a gun, a pistol so large it more resembled a cannon scaled down to his hand than anything one would normally consider a pistol.
Unknown to the newly reborn Guardian, the weapon held by the alien was considered something of a botch in the wider galaxy. Designed by Batarian State Arms exclusively for use by Krogan, the gun actually excelled at what it was designed for. That is, it was a pistol designed to be used by a 1,200 pound creature with overwhelming physical strength, to hammer shields, rip through armor, and end anyone or anything the wielder wanted dead in one or two shots. Unfortunately there's a reason most prefer to use shotguns and assault rifles most Krogan are mediocre shots at best, and downright embarrassingly bad on average. Given that the pistol in question was a slow firing weapon that demanded decent aiming skills to be successful; is it any kind of mystery that the gun sold poorly? Of course this left Batarian State Arms in something of a bind. They had a massive run of weapons that their target market wasn't interested in buying and no one else could realistically use. So they turned to the one race desperate for whatever they could get, and offloaded thousands of the guns at rock bottom prices (then marked the sale as a charity donation on their Citadel tax forms)… and the Quarian Migrant Fleet was ecstatic to have whatever it could get its hands on. Unfortunately Quarians are not 1200 pound creatures possessing an overabundance of physical might. As a point of fact most Quarians were somewhat lackluster in terms of their upper body strength being roughly on par with the likes of Salarians and Asari. Even in his armored suit the alien before Shepard barely weighed two hundred pounds and had the upper body strength of a human teenager… and not a particularly athletic teenager at that.
Its first shot hit her nearly dead center, striking her shields. She surged forward, some wild survival instinct pressing her to attack instead of retreat. So instinctive was her attack, so sudden, she didn't stop to think or ask where her shields had come from.
Overwhelmed by recoil, the aliens second shot was nearly a meter over her head and struck the pipes along the ceiling, spraying rust and stagnant water across the walkway. The alien tried to bring its pistol down, but Shepard was faster. She lunged into his space, her fist crashing into his faceplate. Had she been a normal human her blow would have rebounded off the reinforced material, but might have disoriented or unbalanced the alien. But Shepard was not a normal human. She was a guardian, born again in the light of the Traveler. Her body cloaked in a shield of solar energy, her mind tapped into the power of an ancient god machine, and her muscles infused with might far beyond what any mortal member of any race could ever dream. Her strike did not rebound off his helmet. Her attack did not disorient. Her fist, burning with an inferno of power, melted through his faceplate on contact, liquefied his head and turned the soup like remains into a torrent of steam that burst back through the dissolving faceplate and back into Shepard and billowed out the back as her hand pushed out the far side of the helmet.
"Shit!" She yelled, leaping back from the decapitated corpse, there wasn't any blood on her arm and that saved her. If her arm had been coated red or blue or… she probably would have lost it.
"Scorch." Navigator Pressly said with genuine joy. His mechanical shell whirling to push clear the smoke that now covered them both. "Achieved by concentrating Solar light around a part of your body for a melee strike."
"I don't know what that means!" Shepard snapped, desperately trying not to inhale any of the alien vapor and trying to keep from freaking out any further over the dead alien.
"Considering you've had no training it shows you have a remarkable affinity for Solar light. Which is good, since we'll need that to get out of her alive. But if you're this strongly attuned to Solar light you'll probably have difficulty learning the other Warlock Paths that utilize Void or Arc light."
"I don't know what that means." Shepard said once more, oddly finding that her omnipresent confusion was a comfortable emotional shield from the hard truth of the dead body.
"You should take his pistol," her Navigator encouraged, floating over and nudging her cheek. "We're probably going to need it."
"Yeah." It took her a minute to get the pistol out of the alien's death grip on the weapon. "Where are we going anyway?"
"For now," Pressly said, "anywhere but here." So they went deeper into the decomposing structure, seeking the light, and a way out of the darkness.
"This place is incredible!" Rael Zorah said to his friend Han Garrel. "Absolutely magnificent. Imagine, a space faring civilization, completely bereft of Element Zero."
"Uh-huh." Han Garrel said while carefully scanning nearby doors and windows, "Rael. I don't have to imagine it," he pointed toward a nearby building, "it's literally right there."
Even though Han couldn't see it, Rael scowled at him. "I know that I'm probably getting annoying about this, but you've been a jerk since we got here. This is our chance… or at least it might be. It's certainly an incredible discovery at least. Who knows what kind of technology we're going to find? What it could mean for the Fleet? Or even the Citadel?"
Han didn't bother looking at him, just continued his wary scan of the area. "Whatever's here didn't seem to do the natives much good." He grumbled.
Rael looked startled… which is something of an achievement in a full body suit. He'd assumed his friends issue was something personal. "What do you mean?" The tech savvy Quarian asked.
"Somethings wrong and I'm trying to figure it out. This planet has a lot of infrastructure, multiple cities, towns, continent spanning road systems… you don't just abandon a place you've put that much into unless you have to. So if it was conquered, why aren't the conquerors here? If it was a disease why isn't there any kind of warning signals from satellites in orbit? Plus we're only what? Thirty some odd light years from Relay 314? You can't tell me the Citadel's never been out here? There's just too many things wrong with this place."
Rael spent a few moments fiddling with some copper wiring he pulled from a wall. He wasn't really focusing on the work, but he thought better when his hands were working. "Well," the tech savvy Quarian said, "If you think about it, we don't know what happened to the Protheans either. Maybe what happened here, whatever it was, would make perfect sense to aliens even if it seems utterly bizzare to us. Maybe they didn't leave warning satellites because they had already informed everyone or maybe they thought it would be obvious, or perhaps they did leave some kind of warning and we simply weren't able to read it. As for the Citadel… well thirty light years is a long way without a mass relay. Our ancestors discovered spaceflight almost 2,000 years ago and we only ever explored what? Sixty light years around Rannoch, eighty? Outside the Relay Network it just takes too long to get anywhere. I don't know why you think people would go exploring the better part of a month away from a dormant relay in the backwater parts of the Attican Traverse."
"Uh-huh," Han Garrel said continuing his vigil. Rael grit his teeth as his completely reasonable suggestions washed over his friend like water over a rock. Just as he was about to rebound and deliver another well thought out diatribe, Rael's omni-tool began to beep with an incoming communication.
"This is Rael Zorah," he said trying not to wince as Captain Virixas appeared on his omni-tools screen. It wasn't that he didn't like her but he was still young enough to find being called by people in authority more annoying than anything. "Can I help you captain?"
"I need you both to move, we've had a problem and I'm gathering a posse to deal with it." Rael looked up at Han, who somehow managed to be smug while staring off into the distance. A direction marker showed up on his omnitool, which he quickly transferred to his and his friends HUDs. Barely a mile away. Attaching the copper wire to his belt the pair of them set off toward the rendezvous point.
"What kind of problem?" He asked.
"A pilgrim spotted a spy drone of some sort that led him to an Asari observer. We lost contact when he followed her into the large barrier structure that surrounds the area."
"How did an Asari get here without the fleet picking her up?" Han asked, quickly butting into the conversion.
"We don't know. We're starting a search in orbit, but for now we need to get our hands on that Asari. I'm sending a pair of skiffs to the rendezvous so we can better organize a search, but it'll take about half an hour to get them loaded and deployed. You two be careful, no heroes." She said ending the conversation.
Rael turned to his friend. "Don't you dare say it."
"Say what?" Han asked. Far too innocently to not know what Rael was talking about.
"I told you so. Don't you dare say it."
"Didn't plan on it." The smug quarrian drawled, "You're pretty sharp, so I figured you'd remember."
The two made their way to the coordinates, moving slowly through the dilapidated structures. When they arrived it was to find others already waiting. Near on a dozen Quarians stood around in a clearing. It didn't take the two fresh arrivals long to mingle. There were nods aplenty, and introductions, and general gossip exchanged.
Most of them were from the lower ranks. Technicians, environmental control workers, laborers… and standing alone near the back, deliberately excluding himself from the dregs of Quarian society was a scientist. His polished environmental suit was of the 30,000 credit variety… probably costing more than all the equipment held by the rest of them put together. Even his gun was a lavish display of ostentation. It wasn't a Batarian or Turian cast off shotgun or heavy pistol like most quarrians preferred, but a genuine long range hunting rifle. The kind of gun you bought just to say you had one.
"Can you believe that guy?" He said nudging his friend.
"Meh." Han said looking anywhere but at the assembled Quarians.
"Is there a problem dreg?" The scientist's question was quick, crisp, and loaded with enough derision to sink a Turian Dreadnaught.
"No." Rael said deliberately lowering his gaze to stare at the mans holstered prize gun. "Just a waste." That got him a few snickers and laughs that tried to mutate into coughs from the milling Quarians.
The sound of a mass effect weapon opening fire abruptly ended all conversations. Han Garrel's pistol barked in single shot, disciplined fire. As fast as he could fire without overheating the weapon. Rael whirled around trying to spot what his friend was firing at.
The Asari was atop a nearby structure, blasting wildly with her own weapon. A nearby Quarians barriers flashed in protest but didn't stop the round and Rael recoiled as a woman scream started and cut off in an instant, a fountain of blood and venting atmosphere shot into the air as her suit was breached. Others around him were firing and it took Rael a second to realize he hadn't drawn a weapon yet.
He raised his pistol and fired. Bits of the building were crumbling off, but Rael couldn't tell who had hit and whose rounds hit only sky. Then she leapt. Ten, fifteen meters into the air, his mind boggled as her biotics and barriers flared under the (admittedly inaccurate) fire from the Quarians. Then, as she soared over their heads, she threw three small items. Hand sized. Round. Rael's brain spun pointlessly in circles for a moment until he realized why they were. Grenades.
With the advent of the Kinetic Barrier grenades had largely disappeared from modern warfare. An explosive canister simply couldn't compete with the state of the art barriers, only weapons utilizing mass effect principles to accelerate objects to incredible speeds could produce the energy required to reliably pierce a respectable barrier. Only police forces occasionally used smoke or gas grenades as non-lethal aids. But then, only one Quarian down here had a decent barrier. Rael's barrier had trouble with a strong rain.
"Han! Grenade!" Rael shouted, tackling his larger friend to the ground as the first grenade exploded. It wasn't a fragmentation grenade. It was so much worse. An inferno erupted where each grenade fell, igniting anyone in the radius. Metal ran like water and flesh turned to gas as the miniature suns consumed all in their wake. Only the scientists barriers lasted long enough for him to scream… and Rael. He'd been at the edge of one of the blasts. His barriers popped and his suit became an oven, roasting him alive as cooling systems burned out. An instant of agony, then darkness.
She stood alone. The ground around her was scorched beyond recognition. The air seared of all moisture. Bodies in various state of…melted… littered the clearing. She didn't feel tired per say. But there was an emptiness, a hollowness in her that made her want to weep.
"Radiance," Navigator Pressly said as he hovered from body to body, scanning them. "A massive rush of Solar Energy that both protects and destroys. The crowning glory of a Sunsinger Warlock."
"I don't know what that means." She said, looking skyward. Anywhere but down. Anywhere but at the bodies. "I don't know what came over me. One moment I thought I was dead, then I was in the air… and then I…"
"There are three types of Guardians and nine subtypes. Hunters, Titans, and Warlocks. You are a Sunsinger, a Warlock of the Solar Zenith, when the Light is at its most brilliant and overwhelming."
She turned then, looking at the ghost over her shoulder, a sad smile on her face. "I don't know what that means." Navigator Pressly floated there, his mind more powerful than all the computers of ancient earth, and he couldn't think of a single thing to say.
Then one of the aliens groaned. Shepard's gaze hardened and with slow but firm strides she strode to the alien. For a moment, Navigator Pressly floated, grateful that the alien had saved him from having to find the right thing to say to the most important person his life. Then he recalled it was an alien, at which point he sped over to Shepard and hoped she killed it. With fire. Lots of fire.
Rael Zorah struggled to move. He wasn't sure how long he'd been unconscious, but he was slow, sluggish… heavy. His suit was unresponsive, its circuits either melted by the attack or overclocked by his overcompensating cooling systems. Tentatively he reached over to try and activate his omnitool. He couldn't see it, his visor had bubbled and deformed. He gave a mental cheer as he heard the tell-tale ping of his omnitool initiating. From memory he began to activate various suit maintenance and repair protocols. He figured most of the suit was beyond repair, but if he could route power through paths that remained he could possibly restore enough limited function to call for help and get to an extraction.
With a groan he started to sit up. "Han? You there? Han?" He started climbing to his feet until a boot hit him in the chest and sprawled him flat on his back. He bit his lip to stop from screaming. It tasted like burnt jerky. Then he screamed.
"I surrender!" He shouted, "I surrender! So don't shoot me…please?" He begged.
Then the Asari spoke. And then his omnitool beeped an error.
"My omnitool must be damaged," he said in as calm a voice as he could force. "can you set yours to translate for both of us?"
"She said take your helmet off." A voice said in broken Western Reaches, one of the surviving Quarian languages. Rael tried to spot the second speaker. The voice was close, but his visor was so mangled he could only make out a blurred outline of the Asari who's foot was pinning him to the ground. And her pistol. He could discern enough of the blocky shape fifteen and a half centimeters from his faceplate to make a reasonably guess that is was a very large barrier smashing instrument of death.
"I can't, I'll get sick" He said. Very calmly. Very steadily.
The Asari spoke again, but this time there was an overlap, if he concentrated he could hear her speaking Asari gibberish but his own language was layered on top of them.
"I don't care. I just killed like twenty of you." Rael had never met an Asari in person, but he'd seen them in films and on the extranet, and he thought she sounded bewildered? Sad? There was definitely some emotion there. "And I want to see your face. So you take your helmet off… or else." She finished.
Rael got the sense that she wasn't entirely sure what the 'or else' was. But then he really had no incentive for her to figure it out. "Okay," he said, "but I'll need to use my hands." Slowly he moved his hands, and with one deep breath of his remaining filtered air he pulled his faceplate off… and found himself staring into the orange eyes of an alien. Under the purple tint of his visor he'd been sure she was an Asari in a funny hat (there was no accounting for Asari fashion). She had the same physical structure, mammary glands, even the shape and proportions of her face were nearly identical to the Asari. The similarity was astounding, but the differences were just as vast now that he could see them with his unmodified eyesight. Her skin was a pinkish white flesh, not the blue scales of an Asari, she lacked the headcrest but had obsidian colored fur to replace it. There must be other differences he realized. This alien carried her monstrosity of a pistol one handed, something most Asari would struggle with.
He then made one of the greatest mistakes of his life. He breathed. In addition to ancestors knows what microbes, he got his first whiff of a dozen burned Quarians. A hack became a cough, which became a fit, and soon his lungs were in full rebellion sending him into a gasping hyperventilating state where he couldn't get enough air. His eyes locked on the small droid by her head, noticing it for the first time. He tried to form a question, an apology, anything, but his condition continued to worsen.
"You, you people." She snarled, "Get off my planet. Just go away." Then she stepped back and walked away. Her armored boot crushing his faceplate in passing. The drone, the droid, the… thing floated after her, but its eye stayed on him until they were out of sight.
Authors note:
And here we go…
A matter of scale: Keep your pitchforks at bay! Please! I know Humanity in Destiny never expanded beyond the solar system, but I needed a little more elbow room to make things work. So I decided that in their Golden Age mankind traveled to and colonized quite a few star systems. Although they were all destroyed/abandoned/dropped contact during the collapse or in the aftermath. I'll do an article in a few chapters on why I made this choice, but for the most part I don't think it matters much. Destiny is a universe where mankind stands at the edge of the extinction with just enough spoonfulls hope to keep us fighting. So long as I can keep that feeling, I think I'm doing the franchise justice… even if a couple of details get altered to make a crossover work.
Review Response:
Timeline: For the dating system I used the Citadel Era. The number of years that passed from the founding of the Citadel Council by the Asari and Salarians. I'm leaving the Human side of the timeline a little vague for now. It'll probably start becoming clear in the next few chapters but for now I'd like to leave everyone in Shepard's shoes. But every time I use an official date I'll always use the Citadel Dating system.
Kurogane7: Sadly Tarak wasn't particularly clear in his book who he met, or perhaps the shadow man just wasn't very revealing with him. Honesty to on, I'd like to keep this little tidbit under wraps. A good mystery can add a lot to a fic I think.
