T'SIRI'S HOLLOW
ATHENA NEBULA
OCTOBER 2188
A GRAVITATIONAL ANOMALY, T'Siri's Hollow, named after the asari astronomer that discovered it, was an open space in the densest part of the Athena Nebula, clear of dust, with only two stars, Hemi'nti and Delina (named after her daughters) within. Only Delina had planets, four of them, one habitable, but uninhabited. It had no resources, shallow seas, a very high oxygen content and vegetation far too tough to eat or cultivate anywhere else, tough enough to survive the endless firestorms that raged across the planet with every lightning strike into the densely-oxygenated atmosphere.
Parked in orbit over one of those raging infernos, the Blue Shadow awaited its rendezvous with the Phoenix. Liara contemplated the continent-wide fire blazing below and shivered. She'd seen too many planets already that looked that way, and feared she would see many more. Change, she mused, was the one constant in the universe, and it was rarely change anyone tended to anticipate or approve of once it arrived; yet, it was all anyone could really say mattered. All one could do was hope to steer and shape that change to beneficial ends – or failing that, get out of the way and hope you got through with a whole skin.
Liara herself, as the Shadow Broker, was a rather large lever in that engine of change, but even she could only do so much. She did not like what she saw on the horizon, could see only chaos in a Galaxy already hard-pressed to find order and the light, still reeling from a literal near-apocalypse.
Her pilot commed that another ship had entered the Hollow, but couldn't be identified, and she'd gone to stealth mode until they could. Liara looked down at the fire below, sighed lightly and closed the shutter.
She was halfway to the bridge when her pilots commed again to tell her the ship was on a direct intercept vector. It saw through the Shadow's stealth. A sharp "Battle stations!" from Liara and the Shadow was primed, pulling out of orbit, and running to the far side of the planet.
"Vessel is still in pursuit." Right. Not a fluke then.
"Is it in range? Can we see it?" Liara asked, and her Galaxy map swapped out for sensor data. The ship was black, an elegant curved design covered over with white symbols neither she nor her databases could identify. Still seemingly out of range, the ship fired. A moment later, the Blue Shadow bucked, slewed. Reports flew – barriers halved, a few buckled plates, energy disrupted. One shot, not ME-driven, a particle weapon not in the databases, either. It packed a punch.
"Return fire!"
"We're still out of range!"
"Get us in range and return fire!"
The Shadow banked, rolled over and came back around, quickly closing the gap between it and its attacker. Another shot from it seared the Shadow's portside, but did little damage. She returned fire a moment later, shots hitting what appeared to be a kind of energy barrier and deflecting off. As the Shadow passed it, the ship fired from inside its curve, hitting an engine, shredding it and flipping the Shadow end over end. Her pilot growled, but got her under control.
The attacker had not turned, simply reversed course, weapons still tacking and firing. Their speed now down by a third, Shadow's pilot pulled out her repertoire of fancy maneuvers, only just managing to stay ahead.
The enemy vessel gained, got two more shots in, and the Blue Shadow heeled and rolled, engines out. Inside lights flickered and died, to be replaced by the red of emergency illumination. Repair teams scrambled about her.
"I have bare sensors, no weapons, no engines!" her pilot called. Liara was about to order an evacuation when a comm filtered through the static:
"Standby, asari vessel," the voice said. "We are engaging." It sounded familiar but Liara couldn't place it. Another moment, and normal illumination returned, and her Ops station lit back up. On it, she could see her attacker peel off from her ship as another came into range, this one shaped like a predatory fish. Two shots hit the attacker amidships and cracked it into two pieces, bringing the fight to an abrupt halt.
Their savior came back and pulled alongside.
"Permission to come aboard," came a moment later. A quick scan showed only two individuals, and Liara weighed the two against her crew of Death Mistress Commandos, decided they could risk it. Four Mistresses took up position by the hatchway and Liara signaled her permission. Things changed, she told herself, and changed quickly. Chaos, she decided, not change, was the one real truism of existence.
The two people who stepped through that hatch, however…
…changed everything.