This is not a crossover. I thought about making it one but in the end it simply wasn't getting written like one. So I am simply using a few elements from Dead Space like the Obelisks. There won't be any necromorphs.

On a happier note. The reason you haven't seen updates for so long is because I got a new job and it had kept me too busy and too tired to write. It's a better job than the last one and hopefully will actually last for longer than a few months. Hopefully now that I have been able to get into gear the updates will come more frequently. I really hope so. I have however been slowly planning out where I want to take this in my head and thinking up other adventures I could take all of us along with.

Also a big thank you for everyone who decided to follow me. The ding of the notification that I get in the email about a new follow has kept me from walking away. Thank you. I will try to be a better writer.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy what I write and as always please review.

Updated 30.05.2021 for grammatical, stylistic and logic errors

30/12/2173

Arcturus Station Storage room B122

The room was in complete darkness, the only entrance into the room was an airlock so nothing could leak through into the room. No light, no sound, no air. The room was empty save for six round holo-projectors mounted into the floor. If there had been someone in the room they would have heard the quiet hum as the projectors warmed up and then flickered to life. Two of them nearly at the same time and the third one joining them a few seconds later. Each holo-projector produced a hologram of a different colour. One was the traditional blue, second was orange and third one green, the colour of the two century old green on black monitors.

"Nice to see you again, Mr Blue, Mr Orange." a voice said originating from the green holo-projector before the image resolved itself fully into a tall woman in a business suit with a blanked out face.

"This is unusual. Why a full council hasn't been called Miss Green?" Mr Blue asked, his hologram just a basic human shape without any features. Even his voice was heavily scrambled sounding flat and devoid of emotion as an elcor's

"This matter is not for the full council. It has not attained that level of importance." Miss Green said

"And yet you call use here." Mr Orange noted, his hologram that of man in a classic suit his face obscured by a mask.

"Because we need to have this conversation. It has been delayed long enough. We need to talk about Iron 6." Miss Green said resolute.

"What is there to talk about him. He is a good agent, he has been doing good work. Our analysts believe he is getting closer to resolving that terrorist threat. He opened our eyes to the threat represented to us by Cerberus. Considering the short time he has been active he has achieved far more than we had hoped." Mr Blue said his voice flat monotone

"Yes he is impressive and his record serves as evidence of his skills. I however found some troubling information about him." Miss Green said and tapped something in mid air. Both Mr Blue and Mr Orange looked to the side for a few moments, reading whatever Miss Green had sent over on screens outside of the holoprojectors pickup.

"I have sent you just a few things that we have been able to prove. We know he has co-opted Silver-9 to follow him on some kind of quest that is apparently of galactic importance. Copper-3 has reported that he let Silver-9 see something in his mind which greatly disturbed her. Copper-3 has also reported that those artifact orbs might belong to someone or something called Leviathan." Miss Green laid out her accusations.

"I have seen the reports by Copper-3 but so far all evidence simply points that Silver-9 and Iron-6 have started a mutually beneficial relationship. Iron-6 knew Silver-9 had centuries of experience and a list of useful contacts that puts most of our other operatives to shame. In return as I understand Silver-9 gets to experience something that even the elders of her kind would envy her for if they knew." Mr Orange sounded bored and tapped his index finger against his forehead.

"I would normally agree, but his assignment has been going on for a long time and Copper-3 reports that Silver-9 has not been discouraged. We know that she has been contacting people from her old life. Unfortunately Copper-3 has not been able to provide us with the contents of those conversations. Silver-9 has been very careful about her contacts." Miss Green retorted

"I am disturbed by something else. This Cerberus. What do we know about it?" Mr Orange changed the subject

"Not nearly as much as we would like. But it's clear that they are monsters." Mr Blue said and even through the scrambled monotone you could hear the clear loathing in his voice.

"Up until now they seemed of no real consequence. This facility however proves otherwise. We have to take a closer look at them, I agree. But how did Iron-6 know about them? As far as we know he simply knew they were there. He knew what was being done inside. And instead of coming to us he raids the facility himself and gives everything to the Alliance." Miss Green replied

"Is this not what we need him for? To take the fight to all the enemies of humanity wherever they are and whoever they are? I see it simply as Iron-6 doing the work we recruited him for. The details of how it is accomplished are not as important as that it was done." Mr Orange said

"Miss Green I have also been reading the reports that have been submitted. I have followed Iron-6 mission reports and the reports about him provided to us by our own analysts." Mr Orange nodded his head towards Mr Blue who simply nodded in affirmation

"It seems while you were busy trying to find fault in Iron-6 you have neglected your duties as Coordinator. He has been in the field for months. Tracking down this group on his own without backup. We all know about his peculiarities. All of us here have read the reports of his training. We know he is highly capable and surpasses any other agent we have in physical performance. However from where I stand it seems that you have been setting him up for failure. For reasons unclear. And now where he seems to be succeeding on a mission alone, where standard procedure would tell you to send in a whole team of specialists, you have called us here to cast doubt at him as a person. Mr Blue has kindly provided me with a full record of an incident on November 12th. And I compared it to the version sent to me by you. Do you want to tell me about it?" Mr Orange's voice had become almost the same kind of monotone as Mr Blue's but without any voice scrambling and with every word Miss Green seemed to sag a little more.

"Iron-6 first befriended and then started a physical relationship with a police detective, Joan Cheng. She was useful as a contact inside the Terra Nova police department. The relationship quickly progressed from physical to romantic as reported from analysis of the surveillance data. This seems to be corroborated by recorded conversations between her co-workers. Until November 12th when while attempting to arrest the suspected terrorists Joan Chang along with several other police officers and more than a dozen civilians got caught up in a terrorist suicide explosion. Joan Chang lived but both her body and her memory had been severely damaged. One of our charities has financed her recovery, with cloned organs and some level of implantation based on greybox technology she will make a full recovery both mentally and physically. Her memory is coming back gradually and the doctor's think that she would be able to return to her duties in the next six months without issue. Iron-6 is not aware of this as he was barred from interacting with Joan Chang after his first visit to the hospital." Miss Green answered

"So, Iron-6 now has a personal stake in catching these terrorists? The kind of reason that drives good men cruel. And even after this you didn't send backup. This is a failure in your duties as Coordinator. I will have to bring this before the others. We will look into the matter you brought before us but any action to be taken against Iron-6 or Silver-9 if there is indeed a real need would most likely be the responsibility of another Coordinator." Mr Orange said and his image flickered out.

"I did tell you not to play games." Mr Blue simply stated as he had expected this kind of result right from the start and vanished too.

Miss Green's hologram stayed for a few moments more and then was gone too leaving the room in darkness again. The owner's of the holograms have never met face to face and will never meet. No one would have any evidence to connect these people to each other as even the chamber itself, the holo-projectors didn't keep records. The consequences however of the words said in this room echoed through all of human space.

XRT0189P star system

Ishimura space station was not really a space station, it turned out to be a mobile ore processor. They were originally built before humanity knew about the real scope of the mass relay network so the thought behind their design was to make one central industrial unit that would serve as the home for about a dozen or so smaller mining ships. These ore processors would be sent out to different star clusters and the mining ships would then mine the easily accessible eezo and bring it back for processing. Once the eezo is extracted the ship would move on. Since there was no eezo in Solar System scientists thought that it was extremely rare and there would be no need to create long term mining bases. They had taken an idea from a movable oil rig and modified it for use in space.

Ishimura Corporation had bought several of these once it was clear they were not really needed and refitted them to serve as mobile rest stations. They would daisy chain them across star clusters to provide access to regions of space usually reserved only for purpose built exploration ships. Ishimura Corporation was actually two companies, Ishimura Exo-Geology and Ishimura Exo-Archeology. They made their living from going into regions of space no one had any real interest and trying to find something worth selling. It didn't matter if it was a rich eezo deposit or a prothean ruin or coordinates of a garden planet ripe for colonisation.

This space station had gone dark a few months ago. And everyone had seemingly lost interest in it.

I knew what had happened. Or at least I had my theories. They found something. Something older than protheans. Something meaner than protheans. I knew that there were such things in existence. Before protheans there had been thousands of cycles. Reapers were good at cleaning up but they were not perfect. Something might have been left behind. It could have been some kind of trap to prevent aliens coming and looting their world after they were all dead. Indoctrination, as dangerous as done by Reapers or Leviathan but with no detectable signs. A clever, ruthless trap from an alien enemy I had no knowledge of. That thought bothered me.

I stepped onto the station with all my electronic senses extended. The station's VI was unresponsive. It wasn't dead as it would still perform basic tasks like opening doors and powering local data storage modules in terminals but any queries beyond that it would ignore. Like switching on the lights or powering up the life support. My senses were a better version of those AR glasses I had used, built into the helmet it was a combination of sonar, infrared, radar, enhanced optical and electromagnetic field sensor. I was surprised by how easily I was able to modify my own equipment and assemble the code to manage it. Oh it wasn't the prettiest code but it worked. Something I had noticed during my time here is that people, human and alien alike rely heavily on simply iterating the technology rather than innovating. It sure made for some very efficient and easy to use things like the omni-tools but at the same time the technology didn't really change much in decades or even hundreds of years. It explained how asari could keep their place in the galaxy's pecking order by simply using even the tiniest bits of information siphoned out of the Prothean beacon they had on Thessia and how salarians were the only ones close enough in terms of technology to them. And how humanity despite achieving space flight just over 200 years ago could compete with batarians who were already flying around in space ships when the simple idea of powered flight was seen as a daydream on Earth. Any true innovation seemed to take decades to actually implement. I suspected it was asari influence. With their long life spans they didn't care if it took 10 or 50 years.

I saw the first corpse when I entered station proper from the aft, I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, the body had dessicated in vacuum. Mummified by moisture leaving the body and by the cold. Judging by the hands around it's neck death was clearly not natural.

Deeper into the station there were more bodies. The long halls were full of mummified dead, all running away from something deeper inside the station. Blood was rushing through my ears, even the thumps of my footsteps didn't produce enough sound in this macabre floating space catacomb. I knew that I was getting spooked by what would most likely end up something quite mundane but I couldn't help it. After all my presence here was a direct consequence of intervention of someone from outside the natural spectrum of understanding. I was startled awake on more than a few occasions by the recurring dream of ending up back in front of that angel. I didn't know if it was really an angel but I had no better word to describe it. So if one side of the coin existed then why wouldn't the other?

Fifteen minutes later and by the tally I was taking with my omni-tool seven hundred fifty nine bodies later I stumbled upon a different scene. I was nearly at the stern of the station when I saw the first people killed not by suffocation but by other people. The carnage was awful. Dozens of bodies in different stages of extremely violent death. Torn limbs were the least disgusting way these people have been killed. The walls had been painted with blood, great big spills of it across the floor, the ceiling, the walls all rendered in helpful false colour of my sensors. Not that it would be red after all this time in vacuum. This was in total contrast to the actions of the terrorists. Yes they were brutal and yes they were violent beyond any measure but so far they seemed methodical only resorting to mindless violence when they were on the verge of getting caught. Here they seemed to have lost any and all semblance of their minds going into a total killing frenzy.

As I let my helmet sensors record the scene I got a faint return from the next room. The magnetic sensors noticed an unusual electromagnetic field. Raising my weapon, an M-4 Shuriken machine pistol I walked crept forward. On the internal schematics that I managed to download earlier the compartment was marked as forward observation deck, one level below the bridge.

As the doors slid open I saw what was inside. As I suspected. In the centre of the room there stood a massive black obelisk. A carbon copy of the ones I had found in the terrorist layer but roughly ten times the size. I guess it was the opposite. The ones I have been finding were the copies of this one. I could see it was worn by time and weather. And it was clearly technological. I scanned it using my omni-tool. Inside the obelisk there was a radioisotope power source. Judging by it's size and by the isotope used it was designed to provide a low trickle of power for thousands of years. Possibly tens of thousands of years. The obelisk itself was made up of layered microscopic lattice, as if it's makers had made micron-sized metal mesh and then spun it into the structure. Omni-tool suggested that both the shape of the obelisk and the proportions were a product of the design, made to produce that artificial electromagnetic field, the signal coming from it. The signal could barely reach a ten meters so it wasn't a communication method. Why would anyone build something like this to communicate across what was basically a loud voice range? That didn't seem to make any sense.

Walking around the obelisk I noticed cables running from it to a hallway out the other side. Since there was nothing else I could get from being here I followed the cables.

The cables lead me to the bridge. Strangely there were no bodies on my way following the cables. The bridge was a big one. It was made to seat at least twenty people with the captain's chair on a raised platform in slightly forward of a cluster of terminals. I suspected they were meant to be production control. The space station/ship was on the outer edges of the star system but there was just enough light for the bridge not to be in total darkness. The huge panoramic window let the ghostly bluish light of the distant blue dwarf fall on the bridge, creating deep shadows behind the consoles and seats.

Which is why the slowly blinking red light on the captain's chair drew my attention. Approaching it I saw that it was still occupied unlike the rest of the bridge.

The occupant of the chair was also desiccated like the rest of the people on this tomb-ship but unlike the rest he had chosen to die. His right hand still clutched at a pistol and the left side of his head was mostly missing. It was his omni-tool on his left hand that was the source of the light. I opened the near-field communication option and my omni-tool beeped in my helmet as it found a download waiting. The file was not large but it still took a few minutes to download as the captain's omni-tool had been put in low power mode restricting it's use of energy. I didn't know if this guy was really the captain but he was sitting in the captain's chair.

"What happened here?" I asked out loud. I knew that there would be no answer. It simply was the kind of thing you do when you stare into the eye sockets of a long dead mummy on a starship full of dead bodies. When the download finished I decided not to stick around and quickly walked back to where I had docked my shuttle. Only after a very thorough decontamination sequence and a long shower I allowed myself to get a coffee and sit down to review what I got from the download. There were many text files and a video file. I played the video.

"I am Clark Isaacs, Doctor Clarke Isaacs and if you are listening to this then I am dead. As is hopefully the rest of the crew. That might sound awful but it really was the best thing I could do for them. We didn't know what we were playing with. Prothean technology has lulled us into a false sense of security when it comes to alien artefacts. But that doesn't excuse our actions. What we did was dangerous and irresponsible and if there is such a thing as afterlife, something that I used to deny strongly to anyone who suggested otherwise, I am sure that we all will be burning in the deepest parts of hell. I would like to say that someone made me do it. But it was my decision. My responsibility. I have left my research notes along with this message so that no one in their right mind would ever attempt what we did. The obelisk, the beacon is evil and we should have never tried to control it. If you can destroy it, do so and the place where it comes from. Leave not a single piece of it for anyone else to find." Isaac's face and tone had been calm, collected if remorseful but then he looked away momentarily as if gathering strength and looked back into the camera a broken man "If after seeing what happened on this ship and having my confession still leaves you with some small measure of pity for me please tell Nicole that I loved her. And that I am sorry."

I looked at the coffee cup in my hand, finished it in a few quick gulps and went looking for something stronger. There was a bottle of bourbon left over by the previous owner of the shuttle. I was not a fan of bourbon but I suspected that I will learn to appreciate it while reading the research notes. The bottle was where I had last seen it, deep in the cupboard behind the ration packs. I let the bourbon fill my mug halfway and was about to walk back to the seat where I had my terminal but after a momentary consideration I took the bottle with me. Sitting down I opened the first text file. The title said, Discovery at Tau Volantis.