Captain Velon was at the silver doors of the commander's quarters, knocking on the smooth metal plates before him. Just a few minutes ago, the batarian cruiser had abruptly dropped off the command center's galaxy map along with the mysterious asari distress signal. Velon had ordered for the Yaakra to be prepared for deployment and her crew gathered while he briefed Conn'Jarrel in his quarters.
The doors slid apart, revealing the commander leaning sleepily on the doorframe in his crumpled enviro-suit. Conn gestured for the captain to enter, and the two men sat down at the room's dining table, facing each other. Velon tapped on a console and a sealed cup with a straw rose from an aperture in the table before Conn. Through his tinted visor, Velon could see the other quarian skeptically raise an eyebrow.
"Drink it," Velon said as he leaned back in his seat, "It'll help wake you up."
Conn slotted the straw into his mouthpiece and sipped from the cup. Velon watched in silence for several seconds before beginning to brief the commander.
"We lost contact with the batarians fifteen minutes ago," he began gravely, "the asari distress signal disappeared a few seconds before they did, so the two are definitely linked in some way."
"Let me guess," Conn interjected as he extracted the straw, "you want to send a team to investigate."
Velon watched the empty cup sink into the table aperture before replying, "As a matter of fact, I do. Every single ship we have is crucial to our survival in this system. If we lose a ship, we need to find out why it happened before the same thing happens to another one of our ships. We can't run the risk of getting picked off one by one."
"Suppose they wandered into a trap." Conn got up from his seat and made his way to the quarters' window where he stared out at the stars. "We'd just be sending another crew to their deaths."
"That's a chance I'm willing to take if it'll guarantee the safety of the fleet, commander. It's clear that we're unwelcome guests here, and something's out to get us. But if there is something dangerous lurking in this galaxy, our job is to eliminate it before it becomes a threat to the Milky Way and beyond. Investigating the missing cruiser might just give us a clue as to what exactly it is we're dealing with."
Conn paced the area before the window, his arms crossed before his chest. Then he returned to the table and sat down before Velon, who watched on expectantly.
"Fine, we'll send a ship to investigate," Conn said, "But on one condition. I'm going too."
Velon shot up from his seat and slammed his hands on the table, "Absolutely not. You know how important you are to this entire operation. You know that we can't afford to lose you."
"If whatever happened to the batarians has something to do with the Overseer, I need to know what it is. The fleet's safety comes first, true, but its safety cannot be guaranteed without understanding who or what this 'Overseer' is. It could be a damn Reaper that survived the Crucible for all we know! I need to go."
Captain Velon sighed in defeat and stared unseeingly at the table. "I suppose I don't have a choice, do I? Seeing as you outrank me and whatever you say goes."
"Something like that," Conn shrugged.
"Very well. You may go, sir. But I insist that you are accompanied by another ship. Nothing too big, just a recon shuttle from the turians. If things go south, you are to abandon your ship, board that shuttle, and get your ass back here immediately. I would say that I trust you'll keep out of trouble, but that would be a lie."
"Of course, captain."
"Listen, commander," Velon straightened up, "I'm not putting you out of your place, and I certainly don't intend to boss you around. You've earned your position as commander, that I am sure of, and you have all the right in the galaxy to lead us. All I'm doing is trying to keep you from dying, and keeping this fleet together, alright?"
"Got it, Velon." The two men got up from their seats and made their way through the quarters' doors and to the elevator.
"I'm to make my way to the Yaakra, yes?"
"Yes, commander. All the crew members should have been gathered by now. I'll contact the turians and have them send a recon shuttle to accompany you."
Conn stepped into the elevator capsule and saluted to Velon as the doors closed and the capsule descended down to the docking bays. Neela was waiting for him as the doors slid apart, and they walked together towards the Yaakra's boarding ramp.
The quarian destroyer backed out from the Laraka's docking bay twenty minutes later after all the necessary pre-flight checks had been done. Pivoting in the direction of the closest mass relay, the Yaakra's thrusters ignited and she cruised swiftly through space, soon joined by the turian shuttle dispatched from the dreadnought. Flying side by side, the two ships surged into FTL speeds and were gone.
Velon stepped away from the command room window as the last remaining glowing particles from the ships' engines dissipated into space. He made his way to the elevated platform of the captain's seat and brought up a miniature galaxy map on his console as he sat down.
For the next hour or so he carefully read through the readings returned by the Laraka's scanners of each and every planet in the system, comparing them with the Council's rubric of 'golden worlds'. Out of the fifty planets in Oblivion, thirty were capable of supporting life. The remaining twenty contained abnormal amounts of natural resources. Something was very wrong with this system, and the entire thing seemed to be some sort of elaborate, galaxy-wide experiment. Velon pushed the thought into the dark recesses of his mind and decided to focus on the task at hand.
The fleet Admiralty, composed of the captains of each of the ships, had decided that it was too big of a risk to remain near the Threshold and that they should locate a suitable planet to establish a base upon. Thus, Velon highlighted five of the planets on the galaxy map with bright yellow circles and transmitted his edited copy of the map to the rest of the fleet. In the next few days, several ships would be dispatched from the fleet to venture forth and explore these 'golden worlds' and locate a suitable one for settlement.
For the next hour or so he watched through the glass panels of the command center at the periodic departures of shuttles from the ships of the fleet. When the light of the last ship's engines had faded away after jumping to FTL speeds, Velon backed away from the glass and headed for the elevator, planning to get a few precious hours of sleep before he was needed again.
The Yaakra and her companion shuttle shot out of FTL speeds three hours later, rapidly decelerating as they neared their target. The Yaakra's upgraded scanners wasted no time in picking up the batarian cruiser's signature, marking a red blip upon the map laid out before Conn'Jarrel. It did not take long for the ship to eventually come into view.
From his seat at the center of the cockpit, Conn saw the shattered wreckage of the cruiser drifting ahead of them. It had been almost sheared in half, with the back end of the ship dangling from a thin strip of metal. Where the ship's hull had split, the edges were jagged and charred black. A debris field of discarded cargo crates, shards of metal, and furniture encircled the wreck.
"Switch on the searchlights," Conn ordered as he leaned in for a better look.
The front-mounted lights of the Yaakra, remnants of her time serving as a cargo vessel, blazed into life, casting vibrant white beams of light across the wreckage. A quarian sat before a command console carefully moved the lights to scan across the destroyed cruiser. A batarian corpse drifted across their illuminated view, burnt to a crisp, pearly bones exposed from blackened flesh. Several of the quarian crew members suppressed rising gags.
"See if their airlock is still intact. We need to send a boarding party across."
The lights moved across the front half of the ship and focused on a square hatch built into the left side of the ship. A red holographic icon was display upon its otherwise featureless surface, indicating that it still had power.
"Is this necessary, sir? We could always enter through the hull breach," the pilot pointed out.
"Seeing as that's where the ship was blown apart, I'd suggest we steer clear of that area if we can. There may be hazardous amounts of radiation left over from the blast. Even in our enviro-suits we would be cooked from the inside out."
Neela rushed into the cockpit wearing her armored enviro-suit, "I heard you were assembling a boarding party. I want in."
"Of course," Conn replied, "We just need one of the engineers to accompany us to bypass any technological barriers we may come across."
"I'll get someone," Neela called over her shoulder as she left the cockpit, "We'll meet you at the airlock."
Conn got up from his seat and headed to his personal quarters located in one of the Yaakra's former cargo containers. He opened the locker built into the wall of his room and extracted his armored enviro-suit. These suits were issued only to the quarian military and occasionally to young quarians departing on their Pilgrimage. Thick armor plates covered most of the vulnerable spots on the enviro-suits, including the shoulders, knees, and chest. A thin, see-through hood could be slid over the glass mask of the suit as well, providing additional protection for the wearer's face.
Conn grabbed his extensively modified Reegar carbine off from its rack on the wall and slung it over his shoulder, where it clamped onto the magnetic holster. He then made his way through the Yaakra towards the airlock to meet up with Neela and the engineer. Conn had been trained as a soldier rather than someone skilled in mechanics, and so required someone with extensive knowledge in engineering to accompany them.
Neela was standing beside the airlock's control panel by the time he arrived. A fidgety quarian engineer in a yellow enviro-suit accompanied her, running some diagnostics on his omni-tool. Both had aptly armed themselves for the excursion and were waiting expectantly for the commander.
Conn stepped into the airlock and the engineer sealed the door behind him. There was a slight tremble in the floor as the Yaakra inched towards the batarian cruiser, followed by the grinding noise of the docking tube extending. The door leading outside opened and the trio walked along the tube that connected the two ships. Once they reached the other side, the engineer positioned himself beside the control panel while Conn and Neela drew their weapons and aimed them at the door.
Conn nodded to the engineer, who opened the airlock door. As soon as the rusted metal parted with a faint scraping noise, Conn rushed through, brandishing his carbine. He switched on the mounted flashlight and quickly scanned the ship. Finding nothing, he motioned for Neela and the engineer to follow, the latter sealing the door behind them.
The first thing they noticed was the smell. The entire cruiser reeked of scorched flesh. Neela gasped in disgust and sealed her olfactory filters, blocking out the rancid stench. Conn's flashlight beam penetrated the darkness, illuminating the corridor which they were in.
"The walls are all burnt," the engineer stated as he approached the closest wall and ran his finger along it. A thick coating of ash came away as his finger brushed the wall.
"Any idea what happened here?" Conn asked him.
"I have a theory, but I'll need more evidence to support it before I can be sure. Let's keep looking around." He walked several steps forward then leaped backward with a shout. Conn swung his flashlight around to shine on him, his breath caught in his throat. The engineer knelt down and picked at something on the floor before standing up again. "Sorry about that. Brushed against another corpse. It's also been badly burnt. Skin's peeling off."
"Conn, over here," Neela called. Conn approached to see her wiping a layer of dust from her hands.
"What is it?"
"Look closely," Neela clapped her dust-caked hands together, sending a cloud of ash into the air. As the ash dissipated and sunk to the floor, several glowing blue particles remained suspended in the air.
"Well that explains what happened here," Conn said.
"What does?" the engineer came over.
Conn pointed at the glowing particles that had now begun to spiral to the ground slowly, "That's powdered element zero. See how they remain suspended in the air longer than the ash? That's due to their mass effect properties making them significantly lighter than the surrounding ash."
"Their drive core must have overloaded," the engineer exclaimed, piecing the evidence together, "They probably never got around to discharging it before passing through the Threshold. It's an excruciatingly painful way to go, from what I've heard. If you're lucky, the heat burns you alive and you die a relatively quick death. If you're located further away from the drive core, the heat would have dissipated, but then you would be struck by the built-up static charge. You'll basically be slowly torn apart cell by cell."
"Is that what happened to our friend over there?" Neela gestured towards the batarian that was slumped across the metal floor.
"I doubt it," the engineer replied, "He probably got cooked by the heat. Those in the cockpit however, would have been hit by the static discharge. When the energy hits you, your cells may just break apart from each other, eroding your flesh. All of a sudden, your arm may just drop off. Or your head. Expect a very grisly sight when we enter the cockpit."
They left the corridor and its scorched corpses and proceeded towards the rear of the ship where the drive core would be housed. A heavy bulkhead door barred their path. Conn pried the door aside before suddenly losing his footing and flew through the gap he had made. Neela and the engineer caught him by the arm before he could be sucked out further and dragged him back to safety, sealing the bulkhead behind him.
"That proves that the drive core overloaded," the engineer said as he helped Conn up, "there's nothing beyond that door. It's supposed to lead to the chamber housing the drive core, but the core must have overloaded and tore the ship in two. Keelah, it'll take a hell of a lot of power to do that."
"The door must have been sealed by the vacuum of space after the ship exploded," Neela added.
"Time to check out the cockpit." Conn headed for the opposite end of the ship, his hand running along the walls of the ship, leaving a thick trail of ash and element zero particles in his wake.
Once again, a bulkhead door stood between them and their objective. Together, they pried it open and entered the room.
Batarian corpses were strewn across the cockpit, some slumped dead over their consoles, but most lay on the ground, their bodies twisted in grotesque forms from the muscle spasms accompanying the fatal static charge. Among them was the captain clad in his gold-detailed under-armor, lying beside the ship's navigator and his station. Conn stooped to inspect the captain's body but leaped backward with a cry when the flesh disintegrated at his touch.
"What'd I tell you? That static charge does wonders to an organic body," the engineer said grimly as he extracted a power cell from his bag, "We should bring one of these consoles back online and find out what happened, but I only have one cell."
"Get the navigator's console on," Neela called from across the room, "that's where the captain died. It's likely that he was looking at something on the screen when it happened."
"Navigator's console it is." The engineer went down on one knee to clip the power cell to the abandoned console. There was a click, a low hum, and the screen switched on, displaying the familiar scanner map.
"Can you bring up the last records of this console?" Conn asked as he looked over the engineer's shoulder.
"Sure." The quarian scrolled through a list of data entries and brought up the one timestamped with the exact moment that the cruiser went offline. It showed a massive object less than a kilometer from the ship shaped roughly like the Omega space station.
"I'm guessing that's our culprit," Neela said.
"It has to be," the engineer replied, "It has to be the source of the asari distress signal as well. Seems like they walked straight into a deathtrap. Whatever that object is, it somehow overloaded the cruiser's drive core and killed everyone onboard. From what I've noticed, there's no sign of looting anywhere on the ship, so they can't be pirates."
A red light blinked rapidly at the corner of the metal console. The engineer swiped out from the data entry back to the live scanner readings. A red blip moved across the map, blinked and disappeared, then reappeared several meters away. The process continued to repeat. Judging by the grid on the scanner screen, the object was around two hundred meters in diameter. Too small to be the object that attacked the cruiser, but large nonetheless.
"It seems we've walked right into their trap as well," Conn said calmly as he unclipped his carbine from his back and held it firmly in his arms.