Captain Yuhi'Raemos vas Shiram
QCS Shiram-A, Actina-class Shuttle
Council Calendar: Day 12, Year 2657

In the inky void of space, a small shuttlecraft of Turian make piloted by Quarian explorers attempted to dock with the hulking corpse of an alien spaceship. The shuttle pilot looked down at his glowing interface with a steely glare, hands moving across it with a rigid purpose. "Docking clamp engaging in 3, 2," he said with a tinge of worry as a thump reverberated through the diminutive craft. "We're docked. Computer says the seal is good." The pilot, a young Quarian, looked back up at his captain standing behind him and searched for validation.

Yuhi knew her people. "Good job, Joto. Alright everyone, grab your weapons." The captain bent over the console, right hand grasping an M-3 Predator pistol and forearm leaning on the copilot's chair. "Shiram, do you read?"

A pinch of static flooded out of a speaker before the signal was modulated correctly. "We read you, Yuhi. Receiving both audio and visual signal from the drones and audio from your helmets. May the ancestors guide you."

"And to you. We'll see you all on the Shiram in a bit," responded the captain before turning off the shuttle's communications system. "Joto, you stay here and operate one of the sensor drones remotely. Be ready to leave quickly if we need you to. Everyone else, let's go exploring."

Captain Yuhi'Raemos vas Shiram put her pistol into her thigh holster, walked to the center of the shuttle to the docking bay, and descended down a tube towards an octagonal door. Next to it, a pad was showing giving off a green light. Yuhi pressed it. A moment later, the door slid open from her left and right. She went inside, gesturing to her team to follow her. Five heavily armed Quarian marines and a floating holographic ball followed her in. As they entered the hallway, white lights awaking from their slumber flickered on the ceiling.

The room was made of the strange, gray metal as the outside of the ship, but much more lustrous. Another door like the outside one barred her way. Yuhi pressed another button on the inside of the ship, shutting the 20 cm-thick outer door and pressurizing the room.

"This thing still has air pressure? And artificial gravity?" asked a marine.

"Yep." The captain looked down at her omni-tool as she read off her suit's analysis: "Pressure is 1.1 times Citadel Standard. 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, trace amounts of other gasses. Nothing fatal, other than possible bacteria. I didn't detect a decontamination scheme as we entered so be extra careful. You know how it is. Now let's move out." Yuhi moved towards the interior airlock door and it opened automatically.

Centuries of isolation onboard spaceships in space suits had rendered the already naturally poor quarian immune system into something nearly useless. A single suit tear could be fatal.

Inside, a wide hallway with defensive emplacements greeted them, all of which were empty. At the end of the hallway, another octagonal door stood, this time much larger, and giving off that same green light. Between the door and the Quarians, a stillness hung in the air, making Yuhi's ears stand up on end.

"On your guard, everyone," Mal'Rofal vas Shiram grunted as he raised his assault rifle. "Me, Feere, and Rel up front, the captain in the middle, everyone else in the back. I'll take point." Mal moved forward, rifle aimed, eyes peeled, and walking with a combat crouch. The rest of the crew followed.

As the next door opened, a holographic display flickered to life displaying a map. Rel was the first to vocalize his reaction. "Their display technology is much clearer than ours. The colors are more vibrant and the picture much clearer." He moved his hand a little closer to the display but an arc of electricity flew from it and right into his hand. His omni-tool flickered slightly as the marine pulled his hand back. "Ow!" He responded to the unspoken question before others had a chance to ask it. "I'm okay. Just static, I guess."

"Careful! But good catch." Rel turned to the captain and smiled at the praise as the captain continued, "we're not dealing with total primitives. This spot, here," Yuhi pointed to a red banner with the word BRIDGE on it, "looks important. Should be a twenty minute walk at most. Mal, since you volunteered, you have point."

A slight grin could be seen past his helmet's face mask as the bulky Quarian marine turned away from Yuhi and began down the labyrinthine hallway with his assault rifle raised. His two subordinates flanked his left and right with shotguns drawn followed by the rest of the boarding team.

Over the course of the next five minutes, they passed through various open doors and past various closed ones in this maze of a ship. "Hey, cap," Feere, the junior marine next to Mal spoke up, "does it seem like we're being funneled somewhere? Like we're being watched?" He moved his head towards the camera in the upper left corner at the end of yet another small hallway.

"As far as we can tell, the vessel is uninhabited." Yuhi hoped that her people couldn't hear just how unsure she was of herself at this point but keeping people focused meant keeping people alive. "Keep your eyes open, your weapons ready, and your focus on the mission."

As the six Quarians rounded the corner, past another automatically opening octagonal door with a glowing green center, they entered another short corridor with yet another door, glowing green. As soon as all of them entered, the door behind them automatically closed, just as all of the others have. Unlike the others, however, these doors changed from a green to a red in a moment.

"Shit! We're locked in!" Panic overtook the normally focused captain. "Shiram, do you hear me? This is Captain Yuhi'Raemos vas Shiram! I say, do you hear me?" After a brief moment with no response, Yuhi muttered a series of curse words before addressing the situation. "Alright, everyone, I want 3 people on each door, weapons drawn. Don't fire at anything or anyone unless they open fire first." The three marines on point went to the door the team was headed towards while the captain, the two marines guarding the back, and the sensor drone went back to face the door the team had come through. "We're in position," Yuhi told the other team.

"We're ready, too, captain" Mal responded.

After about 20 seconds of tense silence, Yuhi spoke up. "Hey, Feere," she turned to the marine on the side of the room as she holstered her assault rifle on her back, "give me your shotgun. I want to try something."

The marine turned and tossed the heavy, Batarian-made AT-12 Raider shotgun to the captain. "Everyone, get behind the corner. I want to see if we can get out of here without automatic doors." The doors have been very thick. I wonder if these aliens expect a lot of boarding action, Yuhi added in her mind.

The two marines in Captain Yuhi's detachment ran behind a corner as the captain held the bulky shotgun's trigger in her right hand, barrel in her left, pointing at the door. "Firing in 3, 2, 1." The powerful weapon's brutal sound tore through the narrow hallway as small shards of metal flew through the air, hit the door, and dented the thick armor. The shrapnel-like chunks of metal from the shotgun then bounced back towards the captain, blocked by her now glowing mass effect-based kinetic barriers.

"Uh, clear." Yuhi muttered some additional choice words under her breath as she moved to inspect the damage. She looked at the silvery-gray metal door, its red light almosting taunting the captain for walking into a trap. "Keelah, that blast just dinged it."

Suddenly, a voice boomed through what had to be some kind of intercom. In perfect Quarian, it spoke with a commanding tone. "This is Vice Admiral Preston Cole of the United Nations Space Command and I'd appreciate it if you didn't shoot my ship. Drop your weapons on the far side of the room, go back to the other side, and no harm will come to you or your ships."

The Quarians turned to look at each other and gripped their weapons a little tighter before Yuhi intervened. "We're lowering them, Admiral."

She and her crew did as they were instructed before the doors opened to a dozen bipedal aliens in pitch-black armor and dark-blue visors approaching with enormous guns drawn.


Author's Note:

Before I ramble on, a special thank you to those who left reviews, particularly constructive ones. I don't know what the etiquette is for addressing questions and/or constructive criticism is on the site but the author's notes at the end seem as good a place as any.

A reviewer from the first chapter, "The Strange Ship," asked why the captain of the Shiram would lead a boarding party. It's a great question that others may have thought about.

I've always viewed the Quarians as being a very hands-on race. Firstly, there's only 17 million of them so delegation feels like a luxury reserved for the Admiralty Board. Secondly, the pilgrimage is a very hands-on, high-risk, life-formative event. Yuhi is like Captain Kirk or Commander Shepard in that she just tackles problems head on.

This could just be a culturally accepted norm regardless of how good of an idea it is. There's precedence for this in the game, too. Tali, one of the foremost spokespeople for the Quarians and probably the most famous Quarian in the galaxy, goes on an extremely dangerous mission to Rannoch in Mass Effect 2. Why not send someone else? Anyone else?

Maybe this is just a constant stone wall in Quarian society or mental disposition in general: a lack of recognition of the dangers of exploration or a higher than human-acceptable level of risk. Quarians did make a mildly murderous race of machines, after all.