Chapter 1

In the dark void of space, a sleek ship painted in white and blue glided along silently. She had a narrow fuselage with almost wing-like protrusions and looked almost like a bird of prey as it headed towards the glowing object in the distance. The ship in question was the SSV Normandy as could be told by the name emblazoned on the side of her hull in white lettering on a blue hull. The object that the vessel was heading towards was called a mass relay and would propel the ship thousands of light years in the blink of an eye. On the bridge of ship sat a man with a scruffy beard, wearing a baseball hat with the letters SR-1.

"Arcturus relay is in range, initiating transmission sequence," the man said as his hands moved expertly over the console. Beside him another man with a shaven face, dark hair and much larger build was watching the readouts carefully.

"Relax, Kaidan." The bearded pilot said as he continued to work. "This is child's play."

"Maybe, but traveling through normal space faster than light still makes me a little nervous." Lieutenant Alenko's nerves were understandable as there were two known forms of FTL travel at humanity's disposal. The more trusted form was through the use of a hyperspace core, the ship essentially opened a window into subspace and created a tunnel and an exit point and the other was through the use of an element zero core which lowered a ship's mass to allow it to travel beyond the speed of light in normal space.

While the use of a hyperspace core was preferred, due to the lack of fuel sources in the Milky Way Galaxy it made far more sense to utilize the mass effect technology. This created other problems as core size was directly proportional to mass and to prevent cores from being prohibitively expensive, new ship construction required that mass be reduced at the expense of hull armor.

"Don't sweat it, if the council has been using these systems for thousands of years I don't think we're going to run into any problems." The pilot made a few more entries into his console.

"Calculating transit mass and destination. Relay is hot, acquiring approach vector. Hitting the relay in three, two one…" in an instant the ship flashed out of view and in the time it took to blink an eye they were back to normal space.

"Thrusters…check, navigation…check. Drift….just under fifteen hundred k."

"Fifteen hundred, not bad. I am sure your captain will find that acceptable," the person who spoke up was a turian who was standing just behind the pilot. He then promptly left the helm of the ship.

"Acceptable?" The pilot said with a snort of derision. "What a dick."

"Relax Joker, I'm sure he didn't mean anything buy it."

"If you want to fish for compliments, look for an asari." The other voice that spoke up belonged to Alaya Shepard who had just entered the room. She had dark brown hair and green eyes with sharp angular features, high cheekbones and a slim physique that was apparent even given the N7 armor that she was wearing. The woman looked at the pilot, a one Flight Lieutenant Jeff 'Joker' Moreau.

"Sorry Commander, it's nothing. Well actually it is something, the skill it takes to shoot us across the galaxy and hit a target the size of a pinhead is not something anyone can do. Acceptable is putting your pants on the right way every morning, this…can you stop smiling?" Joker's face turned to a scowl as a large grin crept across the commander's face.

"Sorry Lieutenant, I have never seen anyone who needed their ego stroked as much as this. Well, maybe I have. My cousin Iifrit did the same exact thing, anytime he did something worth mentioning he wanted acknowledgement." Alaya said, trying to contain the laughter as she spoke.

"Wait, Iifrit. That's Hiigaran, isn't it?" Kaidan spoke up at hearing that, which caused Joker to change his tune as well.

"Commander, you're one of them?" Joker asked, to which the mood became even more serious.

"One of them?" She folded her arms over her chest at the comment.

"You know, one of the Pax people, but I thought you were Alliance?"

"Um Joker, you might want to stop talking before the commander breaks your neck."

"Oh, so you're a half…" Joker continued and Kaidan could only loudly exhale and pinch the bridge of his nose while the pilot seemed content to continue flying straight into the hornet's nest.

"Yes Lieutenant," Alaya said and she tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice. "I am a half-breed. My father is Ambassador John Shepard assigned to Hiigara and my mother is Helena S'jet. Well, not really S'jet since she married my father. I've heard it all before, so why don't you go ahead and get it out of your system."

"No ma'am, it's nothing like that. Sorry, it's just that I have never met a mixed race person before. I kind of envy you, I mean I saw the vids of the new Legacy-class battlecruiser and what I would do to get my hands on that baby." Joker was interrupted as there was a ping on his console.

"Oh crap," he said as his hands flew over the console. "All hands, general quarters." Soon warnings began to blare and the lighting changed to a deep blue.

"Joker, status report!" A voice barked through the shipwide system.

"Sir, the sensors have picked up a mark three Qwaar-Jet in orbit around Eden Prime along with a full escort. We're also detecting the wreckage of the defense fleet, I'm also picking up a distress signal." To everyone on the ship, the presence of the iconic taiidan heavy cruiser was enough to cause the crew to begin to feel either concern or rage as heavy cruisers were seen as the symbol of human oppression, as one always orbited Earth during the occupation, raining down heavy ordinance any time the resistance started making progress anywhere.

"Patch it through to the briefing room and tell Shepard to meet me there yesterday," Joker looked back to see that Alaya had already left and was running towards the briefing room and Kaidan was also getting up out of his seat.

"She's already on her way and Lieutenant Alenko is heading below deck. IES is coming online along with the cloak," Joker announced, his laidback demeanor changed professional at the rapidly changing situation. The taiidan were back, he didn't care why they were here or that they claimed to now be a republic. Once again they were at war.

"To any ships receiving this hail, we are under attack by unknown ground forces supported by a mix of taiidan and vaygr assets. I repeat, taiidan and vaygr forces have engaged."

Alaya was watching the transmission along with Captain Anderson and the turian, Nihlus and from what she could see the situation was rapidly deteriorating, the soldiers in the shaky transmission were trying to hold their own, but it was abundantly clear that they were being overrun by the sound of weapons fire coming from every which direction. Alliance marines were hardly pushovers, having been trained by the Hiigaran allies after the war, the Systems Alliance improved on that training in several areas, using the experience of guerilla warfare that they learned as resistance fighters.

"Alaya, I'm going to cut to the chase here as time is short. We didn't expect Imperials to be crawling up our asses so here is the real reason for the mission, not the BS that fleet intelligence fed you and the rest of the crew. Construction teams on Eden Prime unearthed a Prothean beacon when they were working to extend the monorail system. Now, I don't need to tell you what kind of potential intelligence gold mine this could be, but there is another benefit of finding the beacon."

"The Alliance has wisely decided that it is best for everyone that they turn over the beacon to the Council for study. I was sent on this mission to ensure that this goes off without a hitch, and I am also here to evaluate you."

Alaya gave the turian a curious glance and then back at David, she had several questions running through her head, and before she could speak, David filled in the blanks for her, the two of them had worked on enough ops that they cold anticipate pretty quickly what the other was thinking.

"Nihlus wants to see if you have what it takes to be a council Spectre and the Alliance brass has greenlighted the evaluation. I don't need to explain to you just what this means if the Council accepts a human into their ranks, we will be taken much more seriously on galactic matters and us turning over the beacon will show that we are willing to work with the other races in cooperative ventures."

Alaya wanted to say that the Alliance was not really working with the Council but merely bowing to their will, but she kept it quiet, knowing that this was neither the time nor the place to speak about it. David was her superior officer and it would be a cold day in hell when she would undermine his command in front of anyone, especially an outside observer like Nihlus.

"If the Alliance wants to back my candidacy, I will do my utmost to prove that their trust was not misplaced, the same can be said of retrieving the beacon for the Council."

"Impressive," Nihlus spoke up as he seemed to be thinking about something. "Humanity has been somewhat of a cause of concern, as you are essentially an uplifted species and we have never known for that to end well. Still, you seem to be able to put your personal feelings aside for the greater good, and in spite of your connection to the Pax, you seem loyal to the Alliance."

Alaya kept calm, knowing that he meant nothing by it, clearly not understanding how things worked on Hiigara. Her father was an ambassador and when he married her mother, Alaya had no direct connection to Hiigara as she was seen in their eyes as not being one of them in almost every sense of the word, and still this sentiment remained. She had to remember that this should be understandable as while she spoke several Earth languages, her first language was Kushan-la and her accent was still somewhat discernable.

"Well, she has been trained by the Alliance, and she would not have been made an officer if her loyalty was in doubt," David spoke up, knowing that Alaya was uncomfortable with this conversation. "For the time being, let's focus on the task at hand, the Normandy should be able to get us planetside without being detected by the blockading force. We'll move in fast and quiet, and once we have the beacon we'll pull you out on a hot extraction. Alaya, head down to the cargo bay, you'll be hitting the ground running, Alenko and Jenkins are going to be joining you on this op, they are down in the cargo bay for the drop."

Alaya gave the captain a quick salute and turned to leave. "Oh, and Nihlus will be coming along, but we are dropping him ahead of you, he is going to be your eyes and ears out there. Watch his six, and secure that beacon. Arkoshal Cora," the captain said to which Alaya gave a little smile, just like him to give her the good luck or in this case, literally 'safe journey' farewell. This was one of the reasons she liked working with David.