Psi-Effect (The Bad End Series)
The following fic will consist of several diary entries, each one 1,000 words (because I'm lazy that way). This fic was inspired by Cap'n Chryssalid's fic. So if you haven't read that, you'll have a hard time figuring out what this fic will be about.
To Cap'n Chryssalid: I tried contacting you to ask for your permission to borrow from your fanfic. However, you haven't responded. So I decided to just post this and let the chips fall where they may.
Great story by the way. You should continue it
My name…. sigh.
My name is Doctor Liara T'soni.
Here in lies my recounting of our war with the reapers.
This was originally a diary, where I could put down my thoughts, but the more I wrote down our history, the more it took on a life of its own. I have written a more thorough account in the files attached. These entries are meant more for my piece of mind than anything else.
I want to record the last moments of the Citadel. I want to write about the death of planets, and the ghosts of forgotten refugees. I want to write of the coming of the humans, and how they saved the last flickering remnants of the Citadel species.
And so let me start by writing of the start of it all: The Reaper War. The invasion began with the disappearance of several fleets in the traverse, and later, planets. Refugees reported massive ships, and armies of monsters. Officially, the Citadel Council ignored the reports, dismissing them as hoaxes and technical errors. Unofficially, they were scared.
And then it happened.
The Citadel was attacked. There had been no warning. The relays were shut down, and it was as if the galaxy had become silent.
Massive alien vessels overwhelmed the Citadel fleet, before unleashing hordes of bio-mechanical monsters on the surface, capturing most of its inhabitants and killing the rest. The Citadel fleet and armies tried to fight back, but saboteurs from within the command structure had impaired that effort.
In the end, the entire thing was a slaughter.
Later, we had learned that the Destiny Ascension managed to retreat from the Citadel, despite overwhelming attack, thanks to several unidentified vessels. Most the remaining fleet had gone on with them, leaving the rest to be abducted or killed on the Citadel.
After that, the galaxy was effectively crippled. I still remember the feeling most people have had at the time. It was like waiting for some terrible disaster to fall on us; and yet confident that everything would turn out fine. Looking back, I felt like we were so much cattle waiting for the slaughter.
In those dark days, bits of information somehow slipped through the black out, delivered by ships which somehow bore the Reaper IFF. These ships were usually mercenary or even pirate; Eclipse and Blue Suns, to name a few, and their arrival brought us a twisted sense of hope; hope that we now know what we were fighting; hope that we can die fighting rather than die helpless.
Later, we found out that these mercenaries were supported by an unknown race of aliens, which did not rely on relay ftl. Normally, that would be galactic shattering news, but given the situation, what mattered is that our ships could use the relay again, and through that lean of what was happening throughout the galaxy.
The Reapers were picking us off one by one. Palaven fell first, and then Thessia and then Sur'kesh. After the capital worlds fell, the rest collapsed on themselves. The Reapers didn't even need to attack them. A highly integrated civilization is extremely vulnerable to a "cascading systems collapse," as humams like to say. With the Reapers controlling the Mass Relays, there was no trade, no administration, no food, no industry.
And that's how our civilization ended.
The Reapers slaughtered millions, but billions more died from starvation, disease and despair. I should know. I was there.
When the war became desperate, we turned to evil tactics. When the Turians lost their munitions supply depots, they turned to suicide attacks, ordering their ships and vessels to detonate themselves at high value targets. And when it was clear that they could not hold their homeworld, the Turian High Command detonated Palaven rather than surrender it to the Reapers. When they ran out of drones and war vehicles, they armed children and the elderly with explosives and used them on hordes of husks.
The Salarians turned to forbidden technologies. They altered the genetics of their soldiers to fight off the flood of husks which have overwhelmed their armies, and when that proved insufficient, they rounded up Elcor, Batarians and Hanar and turned them into monsters.
As for my own people, despair crushed our collective soul. When Thessia fell, and the Inner Council dead or in exile, the Asari became roving warbands and raiders, attacking anything and anyone they could find for ships and supplies.
Those with power and wealth fared better, but only for a time but eventually, even we fell to the desperation, jumping from asteroid belt to asteroid belt in the hope of evading the Reapers.
I was in one such fleet. My mother, Benezia, managed to gather a large number of ships (if you consider refitted cargo haulers and refugee vessels warships) and soldiers (if you think desperate, starving refugees soldiers) to continue the fight, even as the rest of the galaxy bled and went mad. We tried to fight. We failed.
One by one, my mother's fleet dwindled and our people died or were indoctrinated. We made our last stand on Alrumter. I watched as hundreds of my sisters were slaughtered on that miserable planet. I watched my mother die there. It was also to be my tomb had Shepard and the humans not come and save us at the last minute.
They had wanted my mother and her inner circle, but Shepard told me, "You'll do."
And then after a terrible battle, he lifted the shattered remnants of our commandoes into the Normandy, where we had spent days swimming in a sea of synthetic opioids for weeks.
Meanwhile, the Reapers continued their slaughter, destroying what was left of the Galaxy. In the midst of this butchery, the humans and the Elders fought their own guerrilla war against the Reapers, attacking the Reapers while they hunted down the remnants of the Citadel fleets.
The humans used the last scraps of the Citadel Civilization, desperate refugees and barely active ships as decoys in their war. I should be angry with them. I should hate them, but a cold, cruel part of me looks up to them…
They had survived, even thrived, while all those idealists and noble warriors are dead. They… The humans… they…
I'm sorry I can't continue… Stop Record