Before I continue with the latest story to be archived into the Compost Heap, I'd like to make an announcement. I've decided to post the first three chapters of Yo-Ho, Yo-Ho, An Ashikabi's Life for Me as a full story. Keep an eye out for it.

Now, this story was another of those 'good idea at the time' ones, a crossover (the first marked) between Mass Effect and Blake's 7. The latter, for those not in the know, was a British science fiction TV series from the Seventies about a group of rebels and criminals fighting against a tyrannical Terran Federation. It was very low budget (having a budget even less than Doctor Who at the time, which is saying something) and camp more than a few times, but it had a fairly bleak and morally ambiguous outlook. This story has significant spoilers for the end of the Blake's 7 series.

Sadly, despite my initial enthusiasm for the idea, it petered out. So, I've decided to archive it here. Enjoy.

SHORT CHANGE HEROES

CHAPTER 1:

A NEW LIFE

In a darkened room, a man woke up in a cold sweat, screaming hoarsely. Panting, he looked around in the dark, his eyes adjusting, and he began to calm down. "Cally?" he called out. "Lights on, please."

"Okay, Vila," came the soft, soothing reply in a synthesized voice. The lights came on, albeit only to a gentle light. But it was soothing to Vila Restal.

You might leave the life of being a fugitive, Vila reflected as he got out of bed, but it will never leave you. He was perhaps in his mid-forties, a little pudgy, with thinning brown hair framing a vaguely rodent-like face. To everyone he met, he was polite, even obsequious. It was habit formed from his previous life, a life that he deluded himself he had left far behind, on another planet called Gauda Prime, an entire universe away.

He was no longer Vila Restal, thief, safecracker, fugitive, and revolutionary. He was Vila Restal, home security consultant on the peaceful planet of Eden Prime. Well, relatively peaceful, considering it was near the Terminus Systems, and pirates and slavers were a possibility. But compared to life on the run, perpetually at war with or in hiding from the Terran Federation, this was luxury. And in over a year of being in this universe, he felt content at last.

True, he did miss the thrill of stealing things, and he did help with the smuggling operations on Eden Prime a little. But he also kept as much out of trouble as he could. And there was something interesting about designing electronic security systems to keep people like him out.

People like him. Heh. He remembered one of his first missions with Blake, to the planet Centero, to steal a cipher device from a Federation communications base. Blake had asked him to distract a couple of guards. Vila actually walked up to them and said, "Hello there. How are you? Excuse me wandering about your premises but I wonder if you can help me. I'm an escaped prisoner. I was a thief but recently I've become interested in sabotage, in a small way you understand, nothing too ambitious, I hate vulgarity, don't you? Anyway, I've come to blow something up. What do you think will be most suitable?" And the funniest thing was? They actually looked at his map. That had allowed Blake to sneak up and knock one of them unconscious, with Vila doing the same(1).

He wondered why they looked at his map. Did they think him an escaped lunatic, and were humouring him? Were they just bored standing around, and were actually interested in anything that came along? Or were they disgruntled enough with their work that they actually wanted some of it blown up? Probably not the latter, given that one of them set off an alarm when they recovered.

In any case, what he was, or at least used to be, was a thief, a revolutionary (the Federation called them terrorists), and a fugitive. Perhaps the weakest link in Blake's group: he had perhaps the best self-preservation instinct, aside from Avon, though Avon would call what he had self-preservation, and what Vila had cowardice.

Avon…Vila didn't like to think about him lately. The computer hacker always had some snide remark or other to make at Vila's expense, but there was a perverse sort of respect and camaraderie between the two men. After all, it was together that they broke the bank at Freedom City's casino, and they worked together at Fosforon(2). But Blake and Jenna left, and that swaggering bully Tarrant and the beautiful weapons expert Dayna didn't make things better. Only Cally was left to truly stick up for Vila. And she died on Terminal, all because Avon went on a wild goose chase, looking for Blake(3).

Their relationship, such as it was, deteriorated. It all came to a head when they went to Malodar to fetch a weapon from Doctor Egrorian. Unfortunately, Egrorian sabotaged the ship with ultra-dense matter, and before he realised what had happened, Avon seemed all too willing to eject Vila from the ship mid-flight to save his own skin. Avon did find Egrorian's trap, as he explained later, but Avon had lost what little trust he had from Vila that day(4).

And then, there was Gauda Prime, and what came after. The crash-landing…Tarrant found by Blake, and believing that Blake had sold them out. Avon, his paranoia already at breaking point, snapped and shot Blake repeatedly, killing him, only to learn that Blake hadn't sold them out, though he had been manipulated by the Federation(5).

There was a shootout. Well, more of a massacre, though none died. Avon, Vila, Soolin, Tarrant, and Dayna, all fell to Federation guns, believing they had died.

But no. They had been stunned instead. It turned out Servalan, who was rebuilding her powerbase in the Federation, managed to get a hold of them, and publicly executed them. She used a novel technique, derived from what little Federation forces had been able to discern about the Liberator's teleport systems. She intended to disintegrate them and scatter them over the winds of space. She had been hoping to do the same to Blake, but Avon's actions cost her that.

It was those events, Gauda Prime and the execution, that had Vila waking up. He had fully expected to die that day. Instead, they woke up in this other universe, in the middle of some vast space station called the Citadel. Because they had no papers, they were taken into custody by the police of that station, C-Sec.

After a long and arduous process, they were allowed to go free. And this they did, going their separate ways. Before he did leave, though, Vila punched both Avon and Tarrant in the mouth. At least Tarrant had the decency to look shamefaced: he had treated Vila with more than a little contempt and disdain, but even he wouldn't have cold-bloodedly killed Vila like Avon nearly did.

Where Avon went, Vila didn't know. But he knew that Tarrant and Soolin went off together, and founded a new mercenary company. Not a big one, really only having two members. They called themselves Scorpio, after the ship that once belonged to Dorian. They kept in contact, with Vila having begun to be on better terms with Tarrant. Apparently they were guarding some Asari archaeologist on some backwater called Therum(6). Vila preferred the quiet life, but he wouldn't mind guard duty if it was on an Asari. Few alien races existed back home, and they were generally not nice. The Andromedans came to mind(7).

As for Dayna, she worked for the Systems Alliance as a weapons consultant. The Systems Alliance was basically the equivalent of the Terran Federation, if it was actually a decent organisation. Not perfect, but compared to the Federation, it was pretty damn good. The last he heard from her, she was being assigned to a new ship at Arcturus Station. She even hinted she may be in the neighbourhood soon.

Vila smiled. While there were times when he and Dayna didn't get along, she was certainly okay to talk to. And after Cally died, who else was there to talk to? Now, she was one of his better friends.

He had few around here. Good acquaintances, yes, people he was on friendly terms with, yes. But friends? Maybe it was his experience with Avon and Blake and all that crap on the Liberator and Scorpio, but Vila was wary of making new friends. Amongst the original crew, the closest he had to a best friend was Olag Gan, and Gan had died trying to save them in the false Central Control bunker(8).

Vila sighed morosely. He had to go and check the locks at the archaeological dig site today. And considering that said dig had unearthed a Prothean beacon, which was apparently a big deal, it was important. Supposedly, the Council would be sending someone soon to pick it up. And they were welcome to it. Apparently Prothean artifacts were a common target for pirates and rogue states, and they might target Eden Prime to get it.

Still, this new life of his was better than his old one. That much could be said.

There was one thing he missed from his old life, actually. Cally, dead in the ruins of Servalan's base on Terminal, not long before the planet itself exploded. That was why, when he got a Virtual Intelligence interface for his house, he called it Cally, and changed the voice program and avatar to resemble that of his long-dead friend. That long face framed by a shock of curly brown hair, those dark, soulful eyes…

Of course, she only had eyes for Avon. The two of them had a relationship, of sorts. But she was also, along with Gan, the nearest thing he had to a friend on the Liberator. And even after so long, he still couldn't quite get over it…

"Hello, Mr Restal," said one of the friendlier marines on guard near the site. Vila knew her by sight: Ashley Williams. A bit like Dayna, Soolin, Cally, or Jenna. Or Servalan, if you were into that sort of thing. Nice to look at, but she was also a good fighter.

In fact, if what Vila heard on the grapevine was true, then she had to fight to get as far as she did: her grandfather was infamous for surrendering to the Turians some years ago at Shanxi, in order to protect the civilians. Vila personally thought that her grandfather had some sense, but unfortunately, he was painted as a coward. And unfortunately, this reputation had dogged the Williams family.

"Hello there, Miss Williams," Vila said with what he hoped was a winning smile. "How are we this morning?"

"Fine. You here to make sure that the locks are safe?"

"Miss Williams, if I can make sure that I can't break into them, then nobody else can, not without high explosive," Vila said, still smiling. "Don't want to lose the artifacts, do we?"

Williams nodded. She was one of the few who had an inkling that Vila used to be a thief. She didn't know the whole story: few did, and even fewer found it believable. She probably thought him a thief reformed and turned into a security consultant, which was the truth in a way. Just not the whole truth.

Vila was happy and content with his lot in life. So he should have known that things were about to go to shit. So when something screamed out of the sky and buried itself in the ground, hurling him to the ground and deafening him, long-sleeping instincts were awoken. An instinct to run like hell, or at least get someone between him and it.

"What the hell is that?" one of the marines with Williams asked.

Vila could have asked the same question if he wasn't trying to get over the fact that this thing had nearly squashed him. It was hot and blackened, whatever it was, by what probably was re-entry. He backed away, moving to get behind Williams. It wasn't a meteor, that was for sure, or anything natural. It was something artificial.

Then, things began to unfold from it. Things that looked like a parody of a human form, made of tubes and metal and synthetic muscle, with a head that looked little more than a giant flashlight. Weapons were held in their hands.

"Are those…Geth?" Williams muttered.

Geth? Vila found himself revising his observations of these creatures. He had read up on history, and knew that the Geth were the rogue robotic creations of the Quarians. These things certainly resembled Quarians a little more than humans, with those four-fingered hands and the backwards-facing knees. But they hadn't been seen outside the Perseus Veil for centuries.

Well, until today, anyway.

More things screamed out of the sky. And judging by the way the Geth were raising their weapons, they weren't tourists. Unless they were the kind that went for looting and pillaging.

Vila felt a pistol being shoved into his hands. "Restal, can you shoot?" Ashley asked.

"I…have fired guns before," Vila said. He didn't like it. Guns tended to make you a target. He had killed, but only on occasion.

"Then use it. And don't let it overheat."

Vila groaned inwardly. Why, oh why couldn't he have a peaceful life? Was it really too much to ask whatever perverse deity ruled the cosmos to have a quiet existence?

As all hell broke loose around him, Vila knew that the fates had it in for him…

CHAPTER 1 ANNOTATIONS:

Well, off to a good start, I think. This fanfic will probably update less often than my others, but I think it's a good concept that has legs. Who has thought of a Mass Effect and Blake's 7 crossover before, huh?

I had to think about how Vila and the others ended up in the Mass Effect universe, and thought of the disintegrator execution thing. It is perfectly possible that the characters were stunned rather than killed at the end of Blake's 7, and executed elsewhere.

1. Seriously, this does happen, during the events of Seek-Locate-Destroy. It's one of the funniest things in the series. I'm amazed the Federation troopers didn't shoot Vila there and then.

2. A reference to the events of Gambit and Killer, respectively, though Killer comes before the events of Gambit. Gambit is worth seeing for its sheer campness, as well as Deep Roy playing a sadistic chess-player called the Klute.

3. A reference to the events of Terminal and Rescue, the series 3 finale and series 4 opener respectively for Blake's 7.

4. A summary of the events of Orbit.

5. A summary of what happened in Blake, the final episode of the Blake's 7 TV series.

6. Some foreshadowing: Soolin and Tarrant are guarding none other than Liara T'soni.

7. In Blake's 7, the Andromedans are nasty, genocidal shape-shifters. Think Daleks if they could change their form. Normally, they look like a green, gooey mess of organs, if I recall correctly. They made their only on-screen appearance in the season 2 finale Star One, and are defeated after a long war in the opening minutes of the season 3 opener, Aftermath.

8. Gan's death happens during the events of Pressure Point, and nearly causes Blake to give up on his quest.