Edit: I'd like to thank Starfighter for pointing out a MAJOR flaw in this chapter. the end scene has been edited to fix this issue.
Chapter 5
"Captain to the bridge. I repeat, Captain to the bridge." The female voice came over the ship's intercom, pausing the groups trip down memory lane.
"Well shit." Ginger muttered as he stood from his seat. "Guess it's back to work for me."
"Need me to come with you?" Itchy asked, moving to stand.
"Nah, unless we're being boarded, I doubt you'll be much help." Ginger exited the rec room and walked off down the hall leaving the rest of the squad sitting in silence. Nixie let out a tired yawn before standing sluggishly.
"I think I'm gonna turn in for the night. You guys have fun."
"Later, Nix." Hat called as she left the room. The others called out their own goodbyes before the room once more returned to silence.
"Sleep actually sounds pretty good, not gonna lie." Bacon said after a moment. The others all nodded or agreed verbally, each standing and making their way out of the room for their own quarters.
"Sir." A tech called as Ginger entered the bridge. The damage had been cleared up once again and techs were back at their stations, monitoring the Javelin's status as it traveled through space at speeds unfathomable to any of them.
"Report." Ginger said, glancing toward the female tech before looking back out the main window. The angry reddish-purple still present around the edges.
"We've been doing some calculations and monitoring our rate of Quantum consumption over the last hour." She handed him a data pad. "We started the journey with Quantum levels at eighty-seven percent and hydrogen at ninety-three percent."
Ginger read through the data pad as she talked, following along with the technical readouts.
"At normal rates of consumption, Quantum should be down to about seventy-six percent." She leaned past him and typed in a command on the main console, bringing up a readout of the ship's fuel levels. "As you can see, that's not the case."
Ginger stared at the display with widening eyes. Quantum was down by only two percent.
"Fuck me..." He muttered, blinking a few times while processing what he'd heard and was currently seeing.
"I'm afraid there's more, Sir." The tech said, a strange look of both concern and confusion. "Long range scanners were repaired and brought back online about thirty minutes ago. At first, we were focused on what was ahead of us, but on a hunch, I had the scanners redirected behind us."
A few more commands were typed into the console bringing up a photo of, presumably, what was behind the Javelin. Ginger scanned the photo for a few moments, noting how the reddish-purple wisps were present along the edges, yet he could see nothing of note besides that.
"You got me." He said, looking to the woman. "What am I supposed to be seeing?"
"Our galaxy, Sir." She pressed a button on the console and the image zoomed in. As it did, a very blurry smudge became visible in the center of the display.
"Well...shit." Ginger crossed his arms, the data pad still held in his hand, but forgotten. "Can we tell how far away we are?"
"Rough estimates put as around 1.13 million light years away and we're still speeding up. We triple checked the math before calling you up."
Ginger remained silent as he stared at the image. The Tech shuffled her feet a bit as the silence drew on while he kept staring. She tried to get his attention after almost a minute of silence.
"Sir?" When he didn't answer she tried again, this time gently tapping his shoulder. "Ginger, Sir?"
His head slowly turned to face her, his eyes hard as he spoke.
"Can we exit Quantum?"
"We...have some theories." She answered, gnawing on her lip while she thought. "Our first theory is that if we tried to exit Quantum now, the ship would take roughly equal time to stop, as with normal Quantum travel, which means we would end up traveling double what we have so far, as we are still accelerating."
"The next theory is that exiting Quantum would be more sudden then we planned for and we would all end up as smears inside the ship."
Ginger tilted his head at that, imaging the situation. At least it'd be quick.
"Those are our only theories for exiting, all other discussion was about the repercussions of what would happen after exiting. The possibility exists that we could repeat the event and jump back to our galaxy after we turn the ship around. Another theory is that the drive would be completely destroyed and we would be stranded."
"Today's just full of good news, isn't it?" It was more of a statement than a question and the tech simply chuckled softly before replying.
"At least we're alive to hear the news, Sir. That's gotta count for something."
"Guess you're right on that." Ginger admitted with a smile. "Alright, prepare to exit Quantum. No point in dragging this out any longer than we have to."
"Yes Sir!" She gave him a nod and turned away, calling out orders to the bridge crew as Ginger watched. After a minute of preparations, she made her way back to Ginger and gave him a nod.
"We're ready, Sir."
"What's your rank and name?" Ginger asked, earning a surprised look from the woman. His question had caught her off guard.
"Uh, L-lieutenant Marie Bennett, Sir."
"How many people can do your job?"
"Sir, I don't understand." Marie looked nervous now, her hand reached up toward her long auburn hair, but she quickly corrected herself.
"How many people on this ship can replace you?" Ginger clarified.
"Three others, Sir." Her eyes fell to the floor, a look of dejection taking over her pale features.
"Excellent. You are hereby promoted to Captain. Once this is over, I expect you to restructure your crew and have this ship in top shape. You will report directly to myself and no one else."
Marie's eyes shot open and she stared at Ginger for a few moments before Ginger seemed to become confused and turned toward her.
"I may be mistaken, Captain, but I believe you were in the middle of something."
Marie broke out of her shock at Ginger's words and began directing her crew with a new vigor. While she was commanding, Ginger sent a quick message out to the squad on his MobiGlas.
'Beginning our exit from Quantum, if you're reading this we either survived or you havent gone to bed yet. Also, promoted a new captain for the Javelin. Marie Bennett.'
With his message sent, Ginger lowered his arm and watched as the crew prepared to exit Quantum. He gripped the railing beside the command console as the order was given.
"Exit Quantum." Marie ordered, her voice firm and posture rigid. She also had a death grip on the same railing as Ginger.
"Exiting Quantum, Ma'am." Someone replied. Ginger didn't see the man, nor did he care to. He was more concerned with rather or not he would survive.
"We're decelerating!" Another tech shouted. "If rate of deceleration matches our acceleration, we should exit Quantum within three hours."
Ginger let out a sigh of relief, an act mirrored by most of the bridge crew.
"Captain Bennett." He said, releasing his hold on the railing. "The bridge is yours. If you need me, I'll be getting some sleep."
"Sir!" Marie straightened to attention before he turned away and walked off the bridge.
Crathan glared over the bridge crew as they exited the Mass Relay. Five days spent traveling through the Relay network and subsequent systems had him in a foul mood. Normally they would simply jump to their target system and initiate a raid, yet for some reason, his command wanted them to utilize stealth and had given him a course that had taken him and his crew all across the Terminus Systems.
Apparently, the Alliance was attempting to Crack down on pirates and slavers amongst their outer colonies. They could certainly try, but everyone knew that the Alliance was spread too thin in the Terminus. Their fleets couldn't protect them all and small raiding parties like his were easy to miss.
Crathan had seven ships in his fleet. Three frigates for transporting slaves, two light cruisers and two heavy cruisers. He lead from his heavy cruiser, Khar'shan's Fury, and knew that short of a fleet lead by a dreadnought, he had little to worry about.
"Captain, we are approaching the colony." Crathan's navigator called out after their ship adjusted from exiting the Relay.
"Are there any Alliance vessels in the area?" His question came out in a growl and was answered promptly.
"No war ships, Sir. We're detecting two vessels, frigates, no armaments beside Point Defense."
"Pathetic." Crathan growled. "Jam the colony and disable those ships. Not a single human escapes."
Crathan smiled viciously as he felt the build-up in his ship's Mass Accelerator. Within moments, twin streaks of light burst from the two heavy cruisers, connecting with the frigates in orbit. At the same time, his light cruisers sped forward, closing the distance to the now disabled cargo ships. Crathan ordered his frigates to begin their landing while he ordered the Fury and her sister ship to move into geosynchronous orbit above the colony. His light cruisers would deal with capturing the cargo ships and their crew while his men would make short work of the local Alliance garrison, if there was one. It was more likely to be civilians who'd barely know how to use a gun.
As far as raids went, this was turning out to be a rather boring one. Hopefully there would be some decent females brought up. He could have some fun with a few of them during the trip back. A wicked grin spread across his face as he imagined the torment he would visit upon those unlucky souls.
Crathan lowered himself to his command chair and leaned back. He could leave the rest to his field commanders, all veterans of dozens of raids themselves. Within a few hours, they would be on their way back to Hegemony space and he would be collecting a nice payday.
Everything was going as planned, yet for some reason, he couldn't shake the nagging feeling of danger in the back of his mind
AN: Okay, so we're about to enter the Mass Effect universe and what better way to do that than with the infinitely improbable possibility of running into a Batarian raid. I thought of other ways to do this, but ultimately, I wanted to write some combat.
Now, a user asked a question about recruiting from the ME universe, my answer, I don't know. I've thought about it, but haven't decided yet. I'm leaning towards no, though.
There will be pairings in this, but unlike my other stories, there will be NO sexual content. Except for sex jokes, cause, y'know.
Now, something I should have mentioned, the OCs in this story are based off myself and my gaming friends. This idea came to me while I was at work and stewed in my head for the next 10 hours until I brought the idea up and got encouraged to write it, so here it is.
Leave a review if you enjoyed the story or send me a message on Discord if you wanna chat about what's happened so far.
MechaGinger#2812
Thanks for reading!