An Anthem x Mass Effect Story

I do not own Anthem or Mass Effect, both are owned by BioWare. The only things I claim in this fanfic are my OCs. This is my first fanfic so any and all criticism will be greatly appreciated. Fair warning, this chapter will be a lot of recollection of the past chapters in a summary form, and thus will be quite a bit longer. The reason I'm doing this is because I wanted to show how the other races would react to the admittedly insane tales of an Anthem world, and to make it more realistic in that, Desolas would totally be politically savvy enough to know that he would need all the support he could get to have a maximum punishment delivered to Justinias. If you want to skip it, you totally can because the point of view will eventually switch back to the humans after the summary.

X

Family, Politics, and Horrible Neighbors

General Desolas sighed as he flexed his new, cybernetic appendage. After the arrest of Justinias and his supporters, some of whom had actually tried to attack c-sec, he was taken to the nearest, Hierarchy funded medical facility where he and his brother would be getting their replacements. Thankfully, the hierarchy cared for its soldiers well, meaning he and his brother got top of the line military hardware replacements, and were even allowed to keep them if they decided to leave the military. Since then he had been waiting outside the council chambers for 20 minutes now, apparently the Volus ambassador was a bit of a scene that had been lasting quite a while, trying to get his people a council seat, and had stated that they had done more for the council than any other associate race.

Due to their pride, the Batarian ambassador at that point got angry and tried to argue his people were helping carry a lot of weight in the galactic economy, and it all sort of spiraled from there. Finally, he got the signal to come in, and he sighed, calming his nerves as he saw the asari Councilor Tevos, the turian Councilor Sparatus, and the brand new salarian Councilor, Valern. All looked like they were trying to hide headaches, which they probably were after the volus and batarians.

He saluted them all, stating his name, and holding it before Sparatus spoke up a second later, "At ease General. Tell us, what happened beyond the relay?" Straight to the point, and blunt as a club would easily describe Sparatus, which is why he was so preferred on the council, what with Tevos always trying to play mediator, and Valern already proving to like playing not just Devil's Advocate, but every angle in discussion, making it so every point of view is known, even ones the councilor may have personally agreed with. Overall, it was a good mix of views, but they unfortunately tended to drag on with most issues, making sure they don't have to change it to much more after it's resolved.

"Esteemed councilors, what happened beyond the relay is something that I can only describe as a tragedy, due to the incompetence and possible mental instability of my, techincal, superior, Admiral Justinias." That got everyone's attention, not just because he was accusing another, high ranking and well known military figure of instability, but also because typically, his people tried to get to the point as quickly as possible. For him to deliberate like this meant that it must have truly been awful.

He then continued when the chatter died down, "When we arrived past the relay, the first thing that we had seen were unknown ships attempting to tamper with the relay. Knowing that it's against Citadel Law, we moved to prevent them from doing so peacefully, sending both a First Contact Packet, and a warning of tampering with them, with even some personal history about the Rachni, hoping to dissuade them. What followed was something that can only be described as one of the worst communication errors in Citadel history, because when they responded our scans picked up what we thought were heuristic programs, AI. We were wrong." He said, taking a breath.

Councilor Valern spoke up this time, "If it wasn't AI then what was it? STG reports were saying the same, but there was nothing about it being something else." He asked, and Desolas refrained from questioning how the STG already had the scans, afterall, the STG saw everything. "When captured, we had asked and even accused the prisoners of creating AI. Their response was actually quite shocking. They hadn't even thought AI was possible until we showed them images of the geth. What they actually had was the utilization of what we assume is a genetic mutation in a select few of individuals in their people, known as 'Cyphers'."

He took another breath as there was more muttering around the room. To imagine a species had such a mutation, that a mind could be stronger than even a hyper advanced computer, was shocking to them. Desolas then continued, "These cyphers are apparently capable of incredible mental calculation, processing far more information than the average organic mind should be capable of, telepathic communication which we have confirmed, and hearing something they call the 'Anthem of Creation'. We're still trying to get more on that, but what these cyphers do is incredible. They are seated in special devices made to further amplify their abilities, which are also hooked up to their communications and ships."

Tevos had to speak up again at thought, pondering with a half smile, "I wonder what it would be like to meld with someone like that," she said, going to continue when Desolas spoke up again, "I'm afraid that might actually prove fatal, Councilor. Apparently, when one of the asari in the ground team tried to meld with a cypher, they were overwhelmed by it, and afterwords reported that, 'It felt like i had melded not just with her, but with the entire ocean, filled with riptides and whirlpools that constantly tried to drag me under.'" The Councilor turned pale at that, obviously drawing similarities to the Ardat-Yakshi despite the only real similarity being the lethality.

"Back to the communication issue, upon seeing what we thought as AI, Admiral Justinias ordered the total destruction of all 10 ships, with being successful in destroying 9, which we found out later were civilian research vessels." He said with guilt and sadness. "While it was horrible, we did manage to recover the bodies for proper burial, originally taken by the admiral and science teams to try and find out more about our 'foe', and what we found shocked us." He said, and showed a picture of two humans, one male and one female, with the latter gaining many more looks than the first at the similarity between it and an asari.

Tevos looked like she was going to speak up again before Desolas continued, "Upon closer inspection of their DNA we found something even more shocking," he started before pulling up a strand of human DNA, next to a strand of Asari DNA, "the science reported that, despite being two different species, Asari and Human DNA is at least a 95% match, with a few obvious differences, but for all purposes, humans are a genetic cousin to Asari." Tevos, and every other Asari in the room was left speechless at that. Something like this could only mean prothean meddling was at hand, and there were several Hanar at that point immediately demanding for peace, "This one thinks that whether the Asari or the Humans are the one created from the other, it would be against the enkindlers will for us to fight them!" The Hanar ambassador said, with the Drell ambassador quickly agreeing.

This outburst seemed like it was going to continue until it was surprisingly Valern that silenced them with a quick shout, before motioning for Desolas to continue, "after we destroyed their ships, Admiral Justinias then decided to invade their colony on the planet, stating, 'the hierarchy could use another client species' with reports of similar comments throughout the mission, even insulting our long time allies and client species, the Volus." This caused a bit more of an uproar in anger at the Admiral. Surprisingly, it was mostly Sparatus that seemed the angriest, barely containing himself at the thought of such an idiot making the hierarchy look like a bunch of warmongers.

Desolas waited before continuing, "upon landing on the planet, we quickly learned why there was only one small city. The planet itself had wildlife with capabilities far more varied and dangerous than anything I've encountered before, being comparable to the wildlife on Tuchanka. The fact that these humans even considered staying, but even built up appropriate defenses, tells us that their homeworld might be just as bad, if not even worse than this." That got sympathy from the Asari and even the Drell crowd, the former not wanting to see their newly found cousins in such a dangerous place, and the latter knowing what it's like to live in a world trying to kill you. He had no doubt though that, had the Krogans still had an ambassador, they would have become fast friends with the humans over this, and possibly the Quarians would have as well for the ingenuity the humans showed to survive their world.

"Upon finally securing a small area, the science teams were fast in doing their best to document every new creature we found, including a rather intelligent species of swarm insects that can copy the appearance of dominant life forms in an area, and are smart enough to build weapons strong enough to punch through kinetic barriers." That got more fear and sympathy in equal measure, with many remembering their lessons about the rachni wars.

"Our initial and only assault on the settlement was a drastic failure, where we underestimated our opponent and overcommitted, with almost the entire invasion force dying or injured from the fight due to the human's advanced exosuits, and a different technological base that was an effective counter to our own shields. It was after this fight that our science teams found what was first thought to be a prothean relic, due to being around the same age as most relics we find, and for being too advanced for the humans to have built it." He said, and he had to keep the tremor out of his missing arm for the next part.

He cut off the Hanar ambassador before they could speak, "What we found was actually another ancient civilization that built their own form of the mass relays. The prisoners identified them as "The Shapers" who were said to try and control this Anthem of Creation, terraforming countless worlds, making them almost like copies of their own being the leading theory among the human scientists." He couldn't stop the tremor in his arm as he recalled the next part. "When we had asked the human scientists, whose title was called Arcanist, that we had taken prisoners to examine it, they told us how dangerous the relics are, due to them never fully turning off like our own, Prothean relics do. We asked for help nonetheless, so it was really our fault in the end for it activating. Thankfully, there was a human soldier that we had captured nearby, who helped save as many as he could. Unfortunately, my brother and I were too close, so he used some metal, and his own body to shield most of us, and I'm sorry to say he didn't make it." Desolas looked down at that, committing the human's face to memory as Councilor Sparatus gained a look of respect in his eyes, and Desolas knew the Councilor would do anything he could to make reparations for not only saving loyal soldiers of the hierarchy, but also saving a long time friend.

The report had so far gone exceedingly well, garnering the exact reactions he wanted, with looks of sympathy and guilt crossing the faces of almost everyone there, with the only outliers being the batarians, who looked like they could care less, though that was to be expected. "After the malfunctioning relic, from what I've gathered from the other crew Justinias decided to do a scan of any other relics possibly on the planet. What it revealed left even me disturbed." Desolas brought out a larger holo project for his omni tool, and then showed a 3D model of the world, and dotted across the surface were glowing dots, denoting more relics. Said dots covered the entire planet, from the deepest oceans to high on mountaintops, "The scan however showed the very thing that caused Justinias' inexcusable action. Located here, right underneath the human city, was one of the largest relics, only beaten out by these 8 pillars." He said, pointing said areas out.

Some looked like they were going to defend Justinias' action at that point, before Desolas spoke up again, "Now, seeing as we had already been warned, it stands to reason that they built this to both protect the structure, but to also contain it. Justinias, however, saw it as them trying to understand and build WMDs of tier 2, and possibly even tier 1 classification, leading to his ultimate decision in deploying virus filled, biohazard bombs, followed by low yield fission and thermonuclear cobalt bombs to maximize fallout damage, leaving the area uninhabitable, and unapproachable to all but the strongest radiation resistant vessels, breaking the Citadel Conventions and attacking a species that had no true understanding of our laws. It is of my opinion that we, the Hierarchy, should deliver immediate reparations, and even allow them to prosecute and decide the punishment for Admiral Justinias if possible."

That got surprised looks from all around, as typically Turians don't respond well for being wrong, yet surprisingly, even Sparatus agreed to this, as this was a gross misuse of power with potentially galactic levels of consequences coming the Hierarchy's way. When the talk of the supposed human WMDs popped up, nobody noticed the Batarian ambassador becoming much more interested. As such, when the meeting eventually concluded, with promises that when the diplomats reached the humans there would be further discussion, nobody noticed the Batarian Ambassador slink off to a room where all communications other than his own wouldn't work, "Chairman, I think I may have found a new business proposition." He said with a nasty grin.

X

General Williams was making his way to the Admiral's office onboard the ship. He was to give a report of how they fought, their technology, and why they nuked the planet. As he made his way there, many of the nearby Paladins, Sentinels, and even Freelancers gave him a few nods, signs of respect for saving so many people. When he finally got there, he started to salute before the Admiral stopped him, "You don't need to do that Williams, we're not even in the same command." The Admiral said with a slight smile.

The General got out of his Javelin, still wearing it since helping save everybody, as he made sure he was the last one on the ship, and sat down at the Admiral's desk, "Thanks for getting here so when you did, I was starting to get worried." Williams said, and Hackett sighed, "Thank you, I'm sorry though that we didn't get here soon, to prevent that." He said, gesturing to the world below. Even from high orbit, the crater that was the Shanxi colony was visible, and if one looked even closer, they could start to see the shaper structure just poking out of the rubble, or at least it looked that way. In reality the podium for the relic was completely exposed, yet despite taking several direct nukes there wasn't even a scratch on it, a fact that almost made Williams disappointed.

He looked for another second before turning back to Hackett, "The colony can be rebuilt, and the radiation can be cleared with controlled relics, the people were what mattered." Hackett nodded at that with a more noticeable smile this time. After that, the report became more straight forward as Williams told of the almost fanatic discipline in the Turians and of their tactics. He was confident that if they hadn't had their javelins, they would have taken far more losses, instead of just 40 busted javelins, half of which could be repaired, and 5 dead; two freelancers and three sentinels.

After that, Williams asked about their ships, where Hackett started to tell him that while their armor was almost nothing, their shields seemed to be a bit stronger than previously thought, and were a bit faster. He also revealed that they had recovered an intact power core from one of the destroyed ships, and that with minor modifications to the forges and ships, they could have an entire fleet have it as a back up or to use the huge, tuning fork-like structure at the other end of the solar system within a week, which they quickly started doing.

For the next week, they mostly waited, receiving reinforcements to replace and increase the size of their fleet, including a second carrier and two more dreadnoughts, both being Sentinel ships this time instead of the Paladin fleet's. It was good that they did too, as not even a day after all the ships have been retrofitted with the new "Zero Cores" as they were dubbed, due to being able to turn the mass of ships into zero without changing the volume, another fleet of ships exited the tuning fork, which they learned from salvaged turian ships was called a Mass Relay.

The fleet that came through this time though was absolutely massive, even if some of the ships seemed to be older or even beaten up compared to the obviously well maintained one of the Turians. They also proved hostile, by attacking as soon as they got within range, which they did by suprising everyone with an FTL jump. What really surprised everyone though about this new group, was that they started BOARDING. Now, unknown to the humans, the Batarians were excellent borders, and inside the pirate ships they were probably hooting and hollering as they geared up and got ready, all wanting fresh slaves and plunder. Meanwhile the Paladins were suiting up, some equipping shotguns while getting into rangers and interceptors, while others got into another newer javelin type, called a Shrieker, utilizing sonic weaponry known, chuckling as they couldn't wait to meet the stupid, unlucky freaks of nature that thought going hand to hand with Javelins was a smart idea.

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Abath Kes'Kochar smiled as he loaded his Kishock Harpoon gun. Unlike the other idiot, younger pirates, he was a veteran of the Hegemony-funded raider fleet, and as such he knew better than to underestimate an opponent. Especially one that could kick the Turian's ass and send them running. It was still a suprise though that, as soon as they had cut through the air lock, the people up front were blown away by what sseems like a wave of pure sound. Then, the metal monstrosity that caused it entered and even as he ducked for cover, his ears were ringing from the cacophony that came out of the being's weapons.

When the ringing in his ears finally abated enough for him to fire back, he peaked out of his cover, spying a hulking brute of an exosuit next to the loud one, and he carefully aimed, waiting for it to face him, before sending the sharpened harpoon through the face plate, the big creature get spun the other way from the force.

He didn't get a moment to celebrate his victory however, as he and the rest of the bordering party got turned into red paste as the Shrieker turned its weapon to lethal settings.

X

Tyr scanned the room, looking for any more remaining hostiles before turning back to his fellow paladin, a colossus user who he had worked with in the past. He was surprised to see the big guy bringing himself back up, "You okay there brother?" he asked, and the colossus nodded, before dropping the protective plate, revealing the end of some long, metal object lodged into the back of the hollow, dome like head that most colossus shared.

It was surprisingly stuck in there as Tyr assisted in pulling it out, which quickly revealed a long, sharp, barbed harpoon, making colossus swear, "By the shapers, fucking whoreson nearly cut my brain in half." The colossus said in his heavy, Stralheimian accent as Tyr pocketed the harpoon, and took the gun as well, the colossus speaking up again, "Wanting a trophy?" He asked, not judging.

Tyr made a "so-so" gesture, "In a way. Thing was pretty powerful, and I can see the appeal of weapons with retrievable ammo if the engineers can make it possible to retrieve faster than my suit could make more, not to mention it could help civilians who can't get their hands on Javelins." He reasoned, the colossus making a noise of thoughtfulness. Let it never be said that Codans, and all people of the Alliance, weren't resourceful. They had to be to survive their worlds.

Speaking of engineers, with sentinel guards they quickly arrived with a small team of arcanists with them to help in taking everything useful or new from the ship. They ended up finding a crate full of strange collar-like devices, similar to ones they found on a few knocked out batarians that survived their attempted boarding. Getting a nasty feeling, they decided to search the leader, and sure enough they found a remote, painting an all too clear picture of the people that attacked them. Meanwhile, the fleet outside was slugging it out with the enemy ships, killing far more efficiently then when they fought the Turians, yet the enemies this time came like an endless tide, despite every boarding party after another being repelled. It looked like it was going to be a stalemate, but then the Alliance started launching their own boarders back.

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Ana readied up with rest of the squad she was with, the whole of them being 4 Shriekers, all with rather ironic loudouts built purely for stealth with suppressed sidearms, and two interceptors, her being one of them. Their job was to infiltrate these new alien's massive ship, and kill everyone in their way as quickly and quietly as possible, something they were quite skilled at, due to being Corvus agents. As her squad rocketed forward through the void, the drop pod they were in modified for both boarding and atmo-entry, it suddenly go thrown off course by a stray round, thankfully not breaking through. They all exited into the hard vacuum once they made sure their seals were good, and snuck in through an airlock.

As they entered, the first thing Ana noticed was two more species of aliens, both wearing the reported slave collars, along with 4 of the fours eyes, one holding a remote as the blue alien and the amphibious one worked the main part of the gun. Switching to silent comms, she spoke up, "I've got 4 hostiles and two hostages. I'll circle around the back, the rest wait for my signal." She got green lights, letting her know that everyone understood, so with her interceptor she crawled across the ceiling as the four eyes kept talking. Right as she was above him, she dropped with a knife drawn, stabbing though its neck and grabbing the remote while the other three had their skulls ventilated, courtesy of her squad. At first, the two hostages looked terrified, expecting to be killed. Instead, she handed them the remote, which the blue alien used to disengage the collars.

Ana knew she had to report this, so she quickly opened a secure comm to Admiral Hackett, "Sir, we've encountered more aliens on ship than the four eyes. No Turians, but some kind of amphibian, and what looks like a blue woman with tentacles on her head. Orders?" Hackett replied as quickly as he could, obviously looking up any data to these two new species, "The blue woman is an Asari, the amphibian is called a Salarian, I'm sending over translation software now. You have the same orders, kill the ship's command and crew, but free any slave you find."

Ana nodded and closed the comms as the translations installed. When they were finally ready, she turns her suits external audio on and speaks to the two aliens, both of which were checking over each other, "Hello, my name is Ana Calvus of the Codan Alliance. My team an I were sent here to secure the ship. Do you have any idea how many more slaves could be on the ship?" She asked the two aliens, and it as the Asari that spoke up, "No, but there won't be many. The ship recently offloaded in hopes of gathering as many of your kind as possible to be brought as an exotic, luxury product in Terminus space. I know of at least 30 more asari on board, and 20 salarians, but there might be more." Ana nodded in thanks and told them to wait here or somewhere close by in behind a lockable door.

This trend continued, room after room, slaughtering the four eyes, or Batarians as they had learned from the translations, and occaisionally finding and freeing the slaves. Soon, all the Asari and Salarians were accounted for, and they were just about to move on before they got another message on their comms, this time from the head corvus agent currently on one of the Sentinel Dreadnoughts, Dawn's Sword, "Agents, your objective has been updated. How far along are you with the ship?" The task master asked.

Ana reported, "Sir, we've currently cleared an 1/8th of the ship, and all slaves are accounted for." The taskmaster nodded, and continued their orders, "We found out the Batarians are trying to steal the relic under the city to weaponize. After some debate, we've decided to stop pulling our punches. We're letting them take it, but as we send a ship to extract the slaves, we'll be giving you enough provisions, and a device that will allow you to remotely activate the relic. Your orders are to do so once they offload it into the nearest, large city, understood?"

Ana nodded again, but couldn't help but ask, "Sir, I know we need to send a message, but why not against the Turians? They attacked us first, and did far more damage. Also, why this relic?" The taskmaster spoke up after a moment of thought, "The reason that relic specifically is because, like the cenotaph, all tests let us deduce that these might have been made for war, but while the cenotaph focused on pure destruction, this one shall terrafrom the environment, and produce incredible amounts of elementals. As for the first question, It's been found that, through hacking of their computers and our rudimentary translations that the Turians are the species most mentioned in all of the batarian reports. This, along with both species attacking us has led us to believe that they might be close allies. Seeing that we can't afford to have two confident enemies, we made the hard call." The higher up agent sighed, "I don't like ordering this anymore than you like pulling it off, but we need this to happen, to show we aren't weak."

Ana nodded, understanding, "Understood, anything more I need to know?" The higher up shook his head, "Understood, it will be done, Taskmaster Harper." She then shut the comms off and turned back to her team, ordering everyone to the nearest hangar, where an extraction ship quickly gave them their supplies and offloaded the other aliens. Meanwhile back on the CAN Dawn's Sword, Jack Harper, one of the many taskamsters of corvus agents, tried not to feel to badly about the unspeakable hell he ordered to be unleashed on whatever world the Batarians landed on.

X

Codex Entry: Codan Alliance Political and Military Structure

The structure of the Codan alliance is one that the Citadel Species often times have trouble navigating, due to how divided the three aspects of their main forces are. The easiest way to explain their function is that, they are controls for a great machine, with each individual control managing different parts of the machine.

The Codan Council is made up of the Emperor of Antium, The King of Sundermark, The Shogun of , Tlatoani of Abrigo, the leaders of the arcanists, freelancers, paladins, and sentinels, and each individual colony leader. This council makes all major decisions regarding laws and diplomacy with over governmental bodies, but most individual colonies are given free reign for most other laws and such, as each world will have different requirements for living.

The Freelancers are the main exploratory and special operations forces of the Alliance. It is their job first and foremost to silence relics wherever they go, but when they're not needed to, they can be a sort of honorable mercenary, helping protect arcanists, engineers, or supply equipment or help assist sentinels defending from threats outside the greated walls of cities. Their job is arguably the most difficult, while also being the most romanticized, their presence being heavily used as propaganda. They also have their own fleet, with ships mostly focused on hit and run tactics, with very few dreadnoughts or carriers.

The Paladins and Sentinels compliment each other as the Attackers and Defenders of the alliance respectively. While the Paladins come in to any new colonies and wipe out the forces that the freelancers scouted or couldn't get, the Sentinels follow, helping build the walls of the new settlement, and manning them. This is reflected in their fleets with Paladin ships having the most powerful guns of the three factions, followed by more of a balance between armor plating and speed, meanwhile the Sentinels naval doctrine are large carriers and other ships with incredibly thick armor plating that have decent weapons but are abysmally slow. This is heavily offset though by said armor, as well as their ability to absolutely choke the airspace with the amount of ships and unmanned vessels they bring with them.

Corvus is the intelligence arm of the Codan Alliance, though they lack a council seat. This was actually a leader of Corvus' decision, as to prevent the incredibly powerful intelligence and assassination organization from gaining too much power over the years. This situation has worked wonderfully so far, with corvus agents spread across the entire three factions and colonies, keeping the intelligence gathering web they've built strong. As opposed to how Turians view the Blackwatch, with great disdain, the citizens of the Codan Alliance treat corvus in similar ways to how the Salarian governments treat the STG; with a small bit of caution and incredible amounts of respect. Corvus responds to this by keeping itself to a higher standard than would be expected of a clandestine intelligence operation, though this could also be because humanity has never had a large, meaningful rebellion or upheaval of the status quo before.

X

Author's note: Hello everyone that made it this far. Thank you so much for reading my story and this incredibly lengthy chapter. I promise to get the next one out as soon as possible as I know the annoyance of being left on a cliffhanger. Like the message up top, I appreciate any and all reviews and critique as this is my first fanfic. Also, the codex entry thing was an experiment to see how you guys doing it like that at the end of chapters. If you would prefer them being entirely separate, smaller chapters, please tell me.