I own no rights to the characters and Bioware and EA own Mass Effect and all of its content. Also, thank you to all fanfic authors who inspire me to do this. I wish I could remember all of you. If I could I would list you all down here. Now enjoy.
42 hours, 52 minutes and 12 seconds since the red wave of The Crucible washed over the galaxy and killed all synthetic life.
The cold chilling void of space, long has humanity looked up at the stars and wondered what was up there. A few decades ago humanity had found lost Prothean technology and with it went to the stars. They found a wide community of aliens of many shapes and size. Humanity joined that community and quickly becoming respected members of galaxy. It was not easy rising to what could be considered a new golden age of humanity. There were many challenges but none like the one that arrived six months ago. Six months ago threat like no other came out of the dark edges of the galaxy and began relentlessly purging and corrupting of all life. The Reapers, an ancient race sentient machine came and start a war against all space traveling organic life. They killed trillion and desecrated the homes of many. That was what the view before Admiral Hackett brought to mind.
Normally Admiral Hackett would use the view of space on his dreadnought to calm and relax his mind. When you have spent such countless hours on tours of duty as Admiral Hackett, he had to take whatever moments you can to relax and calm the mind so that your next move will end with minimal casualties. A relax and calm mind is what he need now that greatest battle of all times had been wagged. However the view he had currently only stirred more restless concerns and worries.
The image of Earth did not show the proud home world of a great species, no it showed of a tired and beaten people, people who have lost greatly. Great clouds of grey swept across the skies, raging fires burning across many of the once great cities. It will take years or even decades to rebuild and most likely twice or ten times that amount of time before anyone forgets that battle for the survival of the galaxy was fought here. But if there was anything that the Admiral had learned over the years, it was that humans are a tough lot to keep down. And because of the war, all species had finally put their differences aside and united together under one flag, the beginning of new golden age for all species. That is if this alliance of theirs does not faultier under the strain of many species now being stranded in the Sol system.
Honestly the Admiral almost wished he died in fighting, because then he would not have to deal with the hell that would be the rebuilding process. Just looking out of his window into space reminded him of how much there need to be rebuild. The fleets of dead ships floating aimlessly in space were a great reminder of that. The image of once great warships now devoid of life was just depressing sight for an old warhorse like the Admiral. A variety of ships from the insect like geth ships, to the once proud turian dreadnoughts and the elegant ships of the asari, now all reduced down chunks of precious metals. The worst part is that most likely the crews of those ships did not escape cold clasps of death. The sad tendency for Reaper weapons is that they obliterate almost any ship they come into contact with before the crew has time to escape into escape pods. Due to this most of crew die with the ship when a Reaper's weapon comes in contact with the ship.
The worst part is the view from this window only showed a small amount of total destruction the Reapers had brought. The collective casualty reports of all species that have fought in the battle had yet to be developed. However it was now most likely close to being done.
And just when the Admiral was having these most morbid thoughts, a man, most likely a lieutenant came waltzing up to Admiral with data pad in his hand. The man was in uniform of Alliance navy officer but was missing his cap and had small holes in his uniform most likely do to electrical sparks. His eyes had great dark rings from lack of sleep. His hair was dirty and unkempt. He appeared to be carrying great weight on his shoulders as if something bad happened to something he hold dear, and knowing the scale of this war, that is most likely the case.
"Sir the casualty reports from all races." said the man as he hastily gave Hackett the data pad and ran off.
Hackett looked at the pad and notice it had actual very little text. Mostly just numbers about how much of a fleet was left and notable individuals that had survived or died or were MIA.
First there was the fleet integrity divided up by race. It seemed the Quarians had took the least amount of causalities, though this made a great deal of sense to Hackett as they stayed at the back providing fire support while the Alliance and Turian fleets took most of the beating. But they still only had 64% of their once proud fleet remained. Luckily none of the Admiralty was dead, except for Tali'Zorah who was MIA.
Next were the Asari who still only had 55% percent of their fleet. The Destiny Ascension sadly was destroyed in the fighting. The Asari councilor was also MIA.
The Turians suffered some of the worst of the Reapers wrath but still had an astounding 44% percent of their fleet. Primarch Victus was reported to be in superb condition but many of his personal bodyguards were dead. Even the Turian councilor who took back his old military position just for the battle was alive.
The Alliance sadly did the best it could, but it was not enough. Almost all the heavy ships were gone, obliterated form taking the brunt of the Reaper's attack. Only 32% was left of the original fleet sent to retake Earth was left.
Hammer force have reported heavy casualties. Almost 87% percent were dead including almost all the Alliance Marine sent down there. The forces that had majority survive were the Krogan and some mercenary group under Aria's control. Those mercs were going be a problem later and in their weaken state, they be easy to remove permanently. However the Alliance was in no state to make such a move. Hackett wonder if he could get one of the other species to remove them.
The Batarians were all but gone, their fleet obliterated. One of the Reaper ships broke through the turian lines and went straight for the Batarian ships carrying civilians. It destroyed them in moments. After that Hackett guessed that the last Batarian military vessels lost the will to live at that point and made a suicidal run at the Reapers, trying to take as many as they can with them. Not all Batarians were dead, but now only a few thousand or maybe a million could be left, spread across the galaxy.
Then finally the Geth, who 0% survived. It was amazing to Hackett; he never thought he would be sad over the Geth. However they may still be scary robots to some, but in Hackett's eyes, they had redeemed themselves.
But even with all this death, Hackett had hope that they would rebuild and all would be better someday. For they have destroyed the greatest threat the galaxy had ever known. If they could do that, nothing was impossible.
Hackett just wished he could thank the man who made this all possible, Rioul Shepard.