Gunnery Sergeant Jon Hammundsson
UNSC Everest, Valiant-class Heavy Cruiser
UNSC Military Calendar: February 2nd, 2561

Jon Hammundsson, known as "Longship" to his late squadmates and simply "Gunny" to his fireteam, stood inside of a room holding Betsy, his MA5B assault rifle. There, the legendary Vice Admiral Preston J. Cole sat at an oak table with a glass of Macallan 120 year-old scotch in a crystalline glass. To Jon's right, on the other side of the door, stood Private Safa Amari, another ODST, and one of the few female ones, holding an M45E shotgun. On the other side of the table sat nothing other than a real, live alien that didn't want to exterminate the human race. Or at least not yet.

'An alien I don't have to shoot sure is a pleasant change,' Jon thought to himself as he loosened his grip on Betsy, the very same rifle he received as a colonial militiaman on Harvest.

Betsy was well-worn. The gray, painted cerametallic exterior had numerous dents and dings, and the paint itself was nearly stripped bare turning it from a dull grey to a greyscale rainbow. A few modifications graced the rifle such as a longer barrel, an underslung grenade launcher to replace the flashlight, a different buttstock, and a heavier trigger spring to make the weapon into something that was distinctly his. Dozens of years of training and fighting the covenant had turned Jon into an artist of sorts. Betsy was his beloved brush, M118 7.62x51mm armor piercing ammunition was his paint, and his canvas was the myriad of aliens that desired nothing less than the wholesale extermination of humankind.

The alien sitting in front of Jon didn't look like one of the slavering, religious maniac variety of aliens that made up the whole of covenant-kind, but one could never know. According to the ship's AI, Tyr, it was a Quarian and it was she. There were a few outward differences between humans- lower legs bowed back, two fingers, a thumb, and two to three toes, but, other than that, this thing looked remarkably like a human female and their males looked remarkably by human males.

The suit she wore seemed pretty fancy to the farmer-turned-fighter. Her head was wrapped in a full mask with metal plates on either side of her head. Covering her mouth was some kind of circular piece of armor that glowed when she talked. To Jon, it looked like something straight out of a ridiculous 22nd century science fiction movie. A purple face mask covered the remainder of her face.

None of that mattered to the grizzled, xenophobic gunnery sergeant, of course. If that alien moved even so much as slightly incorrectly, both Jon and Private Amari would turn her innards into a Jackson Pollack painting across the back of the room with those heavy metal brushes of theirs.

Admiral Cole leaned back, savoring the taste of the scotch for a few quiet moments. "Mmm," he paused a moment, "you sure you don't want some? This is the finest that money can buy." He spoke in English and Tyr translated afterwards through the intercom of the room.

The Quarian language was a strange mixture of sharp consonants, few vowels, and generally very sharp. It reminded Jon of German or NuNordic. "I'm sorry, Admiral, but as I said, Quarians have very poor immune systems. We can't eat or drink anything that hasn't been properly sanitized," the quarian prisoner responded.

"That's a shame. This stuff," Cole moved the glass in a circle letting the amber liquid slosh around for a moment, "is the greatest thing humankind has ever created; worth dying for, at least. Anyway, Captain Yuhi'Raemos vas Shiram. That's your name, right?"

The alien captain moved back slightly. If quarians really did live in their suits all of their lives as her files claimed, it would make sense to Jon that their body language is very animated.

"Yes, it is. How did you get that information?" she asked.

"Captain, us humans believe strongly that trust is the cornerstone to a good relationship." The Admiral just completely ignored her question. "That's why I'm going to broadcast this conversation to your ship. Their responses will be broadcast back through the intercom. I know your suit has a communications system but we'll be blocking any communiques you send through it. In any case, your shipmates will know that you're okay. Is this acceptable for you?"

"Yes, thank you Admiral." Despite the differences of an unknown amount of distance, time, and natural evolution, the combination of relief and worry on the xeno's face was as clear as day to Jon.

In Jon's helmet, the Everest's AI piped the translated communications directly to him and presumably the other humans present in the room.

"Yuhi, can you hear me?" asked some alien.

"I can, Liru. Relax, I'm fine. The aliens have established communications with us and we're just conducting an interview," responded Yuhi.

"Thank the ancestors. What are your orders?"

"The aliens claim we'll be returned unharmed after this so just sit back, listen to the conversation, and stay on your guard. If something happens, return to the fleet."

"Understood, Captain. Stay safe. Shiram out."

Yuhi shifted in the chair slightly. "Thank you, Admiral Preston Cole vas Everest."

"Not a problem. Please, Preston is fine. Mind if I call you Yuhi?"

"Not at all."

Admiral Cole, still leaning comfortably back in his chair, smiled without baring his teeth. Smart- it could have been taken as a sign of aggression. "Fantastic. Now, let's begin."


Gunnery Sergeant Jon Hammundsson
QCS Shiram-A, Actina-class Shuttle
UNSC Military Calendar: February 2nd, 2561

The first contact chat went well. So well, in fact, that Jon sat on the first shuttle trip to the Shiram along with three other ODSTs as part of a seven-man diplomatic attache- six ODSTs and the admiral himself. Jon would give the all-clear and then the admiral and three other ODSTs would board the next shuttle, along with the alien captain and two of her Quarian marines.

Jon sat in a utilitarian seat that made a UNSC pelican seem comfortable. He had his trusty MA5B slung across his back along with a M6D magnum on his thigh and an M45E shotgun in his arms. His two subordinates were similarly equipped expecting close quarter, ship combat. One of them had the M739 SAW light machine gun in place of a shotgun and assault rifle. Across from him sat various quarian marines with their strange folding guns tucked away.

One of them tried to break the ice. "So, you guys have a real AI in there?"

"Yes." 'No need to elaborate and give away possibly classified information,' Jon thought to himself.

"And it hasn't tried to kill you all yet?"

"No." Jon was about to say that Tyr was a he but held himself back. 'Information is important and we have all of it.' The ODST gripped his shotgun a little more tightly.

The Quarian looked at Jon expectantly for some kind of elaboration but none came. He sat back in his chair before trying moving forward to continue the conversation. "So this Covenant, you fought them against them?"

"Yep."

"How long?"

Jon didn't move despite the painful memories. "Since first contact." His family escaped only to be glassed in the next battle at Green Hills. His colonial militia squadmates were almost all dead after various campaigns. At that point in Jon's life, it would have been easier to list off who hadn't died, and that before he was frozen in cryo for nearly twenty years.

"Yeah, but how long ago was that?"

'This thing just doesn't shut up, does it? Cole did say to play nice...' Jon sighed and did some mental arithmetic."A few days away from my 36th anniversary if you count the time in cryo, which I don't."

The next few minutes of the flight were quiet before the pilot interrupted to say something in Quarian, then in English. "Docking in 30 seconds." The seconds ticked down before a heavy thump shook the entire ship. "Docking complete."

"You," Jon pointed to the nosy quarian across from him at the back of the ship, "help me move the food. Fireteam, move after the quarians. No aggressive moves." Jon shouldered his shotgun on his back using a magnetic holster and picked up one end of the crate with one hand. His other hand rested on his massive pistol. The quarian used both of his arms as they moved the crate out of the shuttle and into the receiving area of the quarian corvette.

The hangar bay was packed with empty beds, boxes, and things hanging from wherever things could hang from. The designs were all built to favor function over form and it looked like there wasn't a single piece of unnecessary material on any of the furniture. No paint adorned anything. Yet, in spite all of that, it all somehow looked dirty. 'This place is a shithole,' he thought to himself as he moved the crate with the help of the alien. "Nice place you've got here," he lied to the xeno next to him, "looks like a nice home." 'I've seen glassed worlds that looked nicer than this,' he added to himself. "Is this location fine?"

"There is fine," an unknown voice said. "I'm Hunn'Vuras vas Shiram, second in command of the ship. Pleasure to meet you, human." The quarian extended a hand which Jon didn't meet, instead preferring to keep his hand resting over the meaty pistol on his thigh. "Please, we mean you no harm."

"I've never met an alien that didn't want me dead and I'm not about to believe that's about to change." Jon used his surgically implanted neural link to turn off his external speakers and opened up a direct link to the Everest. "This is Shield Actual. Appears to be clear, other than the aliens themselves."

"Copy Shield Actual," the Everest's comm officer responded, "update us when the shuttle returns."

"Copy Everest." Jon switched back to his external speakers. "Everest has given all-clear to the shuttle, quarian pilot. Feel free to pick up everyone else."

The quarian acknowledged the command and left back through the airlock. The faded and stained door closed behind him with a tinny thump. Jon felt the small shuttle shake the fragile corvette as the airlock and clamp of the Shiram disengaged with its diminutive shuttle.

The ODST gently took his shotgun from the clamps at his sacrospinalis and gingerly, finger off of the trigger, hefted it up to resting position. His movement caused the fragmentation grenades on his chest to jingle. As he pulled his weapon, the quarians in the hangar bay moved back slightly. Noticing, the gunnery sergeant tried to ease the tension. "Just for comfort. I like the way it feels."

"Be careful, human," Hunn began, "we have ten of us for every one of you." The alien XO turned around and left to go work on some unspecified task, or maybe just observe.

Jon could read between those lines. He looked at his teammates, Private Amari with her shotgun and the massive albanian form of Corporal Alikaj holding his light machine gun. Their hands were tightly gripping their weapons. 'Good,' he thought, 'can't be too careful.'

Not three minutes later, a call came in from the Everest. "Shield actual, this is Everest. Pickup is here."

"Roger Everest." Jon looked around the hangar. The quarians were all nervous, of course, with the intimidating combat armor of the ODSTs and their massive guns, but nothing overtly risky. "Package is cleared for transport, over."

"Roger that, shield actual. Package is en-route, over." The comms went dead and everyone waited around for another four minutes.

Tension filled the air until the shuttle docked again. Jon didn't move his weapon an inch during that agonizingly long period. 'If there's going to be another hostile first contact, it can be the fault of aliens, again,' he thought, thinking back to the screams of his friend Osmo back on Harvest as an alien, a grunt, tore into the nape of his neck.

The doors opened to the sounds of chatter as Cole walked out wearing full ODST armor. He turned to Jon, palm facing downwards but arm out slightly, gesturing to the ODSTs to lower their weapons. "Holster those weapons, troopers. We're guests here."

Jon looked back. "Sir, our job is to keep you safe."

"Not every first contact must be Harvest."

"Yes sir," he said defiantly. Jon made sure a round was chambered in his shotgun and the safety was on before he clamped it onto his back. The other ODSTs in his team did the same.

The quarian captain of the frigate Jon stood in followed the human admiral, looked at the tensed ODSTs, and continued her conversation with the admiral as the two walked forwards through the hangar. "The turians are the military might of the citadel council," she explained as she walked. Jon followed but his attention listed elsewhere.

Past the presumably normally bustling hangar bay, dirty, gray panels with faded and chipped red accents lined the long, narrow hallway of the small ship. One or two of the panels were set down with bare wiring and patched piping exposed underneath, likely from recent repairs. Well-worn beds, rusty metal crates, and various personal items lined and filled every spare inch of free space, but there were no people inhabiting the space. The rooms themselves also had no doors, so it was unlikely that they were slavers, pirates, or anything like that.

The train of people stopped at a wide door. "This is the mess hall," Yuhi said, "I have a ship to run but my second in command will be down to answer any additional questions you may have." She turned around and disappeared past a corner as all of the humans and a handful of the quarian marines shuffled into the cramped room.

Jon sat down at one of the just so slightly uncomfortable chairs at the large table that dominated the mess hall as did everyone else. No one was saying anything and the admiral did say to try to break the ice. "So," the ODST began, "what do you guys do to kill time around here?"

"I'm guessing you've never heard of Skyllian Five?" Jon could almost hear the quarian marine grinning as he pulled a deck of hexagonal playing cards from one of the seemingly endless layers of pockets on his suit.

The seven hour trip to the quarian armada passed by without incident, mostly. During one of the games of Skyllian Five, the quarian crew discovered that humans also partook in alcohol. Corporal Alikaj survived the ordeal with a heavy stumble and a Quarian crewmember survived in the infirmary.

The third round of poker was an ongoing battle between a quarian marine, two quarian crew members on break, Private Amari, and Vice Admiral Preston Cole. Dozens had gathered to watch at this point, both quarian and human.

"Full-waelarm!" exclaimed one of the crew as she slammed her five cards down and began gesturing towards the hexagonal chips.

Without even a hint of expression or emotion, Preston Cole gently placed his five cards. "Zomo."

The room erupted in a cacophony of sound.

"Keelah," the unlucky quarian almost gasped for air, "what are the chances of that?"

Cole's brow furrowed for a few moments. "Around three percent," he responded.

Jon smiled before turning back to his conversation with the three quarians. "Where was I?"

"Your first contact?"

"Right, Harvest. Beautiful planet, back in '24. Plains of crops as far as the eye can see. My folks, my siblings, and I, we were simple farmers, you know. Standard crops- corn, okra, ambrosia, spinach, you name it. I had always wanted to be an explorer, though." Jon looked up wistfully, thinking of those better days. "Anyway, I joined the militia thinking I'd be able to join the marines with a good word from my commanding officer. Instead, we got attacked by aliens and I joined the best of the best," Jon explained as he pointed to his faded, chipped, and melted ODST emblem on his left shoulder pauldron.

"How was your family when you left for the battle that got you stuck here?"

"Dead. Us militiamen got 'em off planetside to this other colony called Green Hills. That was the next colony hit. Most of the survivors of Harvest got glassed there." The quarians didn't respond for a few moments until Jon let them off of the hook. "Relax, it happened a long time ago and plus, it's not like I've got a shortage of targets to vent my anger out on, you know?"

"What's does it mean to glass a planet?" asked another of the quarians.

"The covvies use these plasma weapons, both on the ships and on the ground. If a planet doesn't have anything that interests them, the covvies just use that plasma to turn the surface of the planet to literal glass." Jon noticed the shock spreading through the aliens' faces. "If it does, they land, crush us, take what they want, then turn it to glass. We make 'em pay for it, of course. Admiral Cole over there," Jon turned to the human admiral beginning to leverage his helmet's polarized visor while staring his poker opponents' faces, "has won more battles than any other human in history but that's still not enough."

"Keelah," the shock was evident in the bystander's voice as he joined the conversation.

"Every year, we only lose more worlds. By the time we accidentally left, the death toll was, like, a billion? Maybe one-point-five?" Jon hadn't actually ever summarized that kind of loss before. He never needed to- he just deployed on some nameless world, won or lost, usually lost, packed up his gear, and moved on to the next planet. "We started the war with, you know, over eight hundred fifty colonies. We were down to a shred over six hundred when the Everest vanished."

"Keelah se'lai, Jon vas Everest," said the bystander somberly.

"Sounds like what happened to us," opined another.

"Well the ancestors'-damned council probably won't help you," said the third crewmember.

"The council only helps themselves," agreed the first.

Hunn'Vuras, the second in command of the ship, squeezed through the crowd seconds later before announcing the ship's imminent arrival. "Arriving at the fleet in 5 minutes! Humans, Yuhi will be waiting for you in the observation deck. Mal," Hunn looked down at the quarian marine in the game, "would you mind escorting our guests?"

Not at all, sir." Mal'Rofal stood up. "Alright, follow me."

The crowd parted as the humans left the game and made their way towards the observation room. The well-lived and cozy hallways were indicative of not just a home, but of a race that refused to lay down and be taken by the forces of life. If Reach, or maybe even Earth, was lost, was this what was in store for humanity?

Mal kept walking but craned his neck around. "So, are all of you humans such lucky pyjacks or is that unique to just a few of you?"

Jon let out a chortle. "People don't survive decades of constant combat from skill alone."

"No they don't," Mal soberly responded as he turned a corner, walked down a set of stairs, and arrived at an open door. The humans followed him down. "Here we are: the observation deck. The Captain is waiting for you."

"Thanks." As the years of war kept dragging on, Cole had become ever more brusque.

Jon was all too familiar with strategies for coping with loss. For Jon, it was by becoming everyone's acquaintance but never a friend. For Cole, maybe it was by making a wall. Jon had led people to their deaths- Mendoza, Jangellion, Ming, to name just a few- but nothing close to the scale of Cole's command. How many men and women had he maneuvered right into their necessary deaths? A hundred thousand? A million? More?

"Admiral Cole vas Everest," Yuhi extended a hand which Cole matched, "please, have a seat; enjoy the view." Cole turned to Jon's squad and nodded. Jon followed the admiral's orders and fell back into a chair, admiring the quiet grandeur of space.

"I love this room. This here was a Quarian special, a place for people to relax. The whole bottom half of the ship was, actually." Yuhi sat down in a chair close to the Admiral's she had staked out before the human's arrival. "We retrofitted it not long after getting the Shiram. Most races measure their ships in meters, but we also have to measure ours in square meters.

"See that in the distance? That's the mass relay in person. No holographic projections " Yuhi pointed to the teardrop-shaped blob floating in space. "Behind that should be the fleet."

"What should I expect when we arrive? And why are you helping us?" the human admiral asked as he stared out of the window towards nothing in particular.

"When you arrive at the fleet, you can expect a short tour or diversion while I debrief the admiralty board. Afterwards, you'll plead your case for those raw materials to fix this 'slipspace drive' of yours.

"As to why? That's the easy part. The Quarian people are dying and the Citadel Council has condemned us to this fate. We're never going to get the resources for another agricultural ship or dreadnought. When one goes, so do the millions of Quarians that depend on it for food and shelter. I'm a captain; I've sat in the meetings and I've read the reports. Year after year, our population only decreases.

"The technology of the Everest, of humans, is our best hope. With your 'slipspace drive,' we could be free from the relays; we could make our own colonies away from the Citadel Council. With friendly AI, we could fight back against or maybe even negotiate with the Geth. With a home for our people, we could rebuild.

"Oh, and the word 'Admiral' translates to Quarian just fine. It'd be nice to have a friend in a high place, Admiral Cole vas Everest."

The admiral turned to the captain. "Hmm," he let out with his low voice, "here's to a long and fruitful relationship, then," as he raised an invisible glass of scotch to his host before looking back out into the depths of space.

"Yes, definitely," she smiled before looking back through the window herself. The Shiram ventured closer and closer to the relay as the rings in its center began spinning faster and faster. "They're beautiful things, these mass relays," Yuhi opined. The bright, blue glow of the relay's core filled the observatory, patterns from the rings sweeping across the room and its inhabitants as the ship inched ever closer to the monolithic construction.

The admiral nodded when all of a sudden, a jolt of what looked to be electricity arced over to the Shiram. The rings were spinning at a truly prodigious rate before they stopped, the stars bent backwards, and the Shiram was launched thousands of lightyears in the blink of an eye.


Author's note:

I had been toying with having the interview be from Yuhi's perspective but ultimately chose against it for various reasons. Mostly, I wanted to get a human perspective in on an alien in the story but I didn't want to shift perspective mid-chapter.

Measurement-wise, I chose to stick with the human metric system throughout the stories. I could have come up with some complicated conversions for distance, volume, etc. but does that really add anything to the story? Rather than adding flavor, I felt as though something like that would make the story needlessly complex and difficult to ingest. If you have strong opinions in either direction, let me know.

Science-wise, quarians drink human liquor and vice-versa. Ignoring the fact that Mass Effect's chirality explanation doesn't actually matter in life for a number of reasons (such as physics preferring a certain DNA orientation; see Drieling and Gay's 2014 paper 'Chirally Sensitive Electron-Induced Molecular Breakup and the Vester-Ulbricht Hypothesis' for additional information), I don't believe that alcohol has DNA remnants inside of it besides the yeast and sugars? As long as any yeast inside of it was filtered out, I feel like cross-species alcohol should be a reasonable thing. My thought was that quarians would do such things anyway for cleanliness purposes. Still, I'm no expert on biology or chemistry. Perhaps someone with more knowledge on the subject can let me know how wrong I am.

Story format-wise, do readers prefer infrequent longer chapters or more frequent shorter ones? This is a chapter that I could have easily broken up into 2 or 3 sections with minimal issue but I'd prefer to hear everyone's thoughts before I go one way or the other.

Again, still looking for a proof-reader/beta-reader. Is there a place on the site where I could grab one's time? In the meantime, if you notice a grammatical error, let me know and I'll fix it.