This chapter brought to you by Time of Dying by Three Days Grace.
And the awesome Halo wars AMV that some guy on youtube made for it.
And cheap steak. Mmm... steak.
Chapter One: Second Contact
Part Two: Negotiations and a history lesson
"Goddess..."
The single statement played host to the pure shock at the suddenness and savagery of the attack. Fleet battles were things of hours, ships maneuvering and pounding at barriers and armor. A fleet the size of the one the Geth had brought to Inious would take hours to destroy... and these newcomers had dispatched them all in seconds. Then, one of the ships began to come within range of the advanced sensors of the dreadnought-flagship of General Septimus.
"This can't be right." one of the sensor officers said, almost at the edge of hearing.
"What can't be right?" the Asari next to him asked
"Look at these figures. There's got to be an error somewhere!" the Turian said, somewhat annoyed
"That's... have you run a diagnostic?" the Asari looked interested.
"Yeah, it says everything is working right, but there's no way those mass figures could be right. They'd have to have hulls almost as dense as neutronium!" the Turian gestured at the display he ad been staring at
"And the size estimates... Goddess, they can't be that big! It'd be almost completely impractical! They'd have to spend days discharging their cores!" this as the Asari looked at her own screen perplexed.
The bridge filled with awed and astonished gasps and hushed expletives as the ship came alongside the Dreadnought. Wicked gun barrels protruded from armored turrets, hexagonal armor plates frosted its flanks, and huge hanger doors were spaced along its length. on its side, in large letters, was a name: Vigel at Dawn.
"by the Goddess..."
"My gods!"
"Holy-"
They were interrupted by the communications officer.
"General Septimus! We're being hailed!"
Admiral Miranda Keyes had arrived.
"Ma'am, we are showing zulu hostiles, all ships reporting green."
"Thank you lieutenant." Miranda sighed, mentally scolding herself. She knew, knew with absolute certainty, that that little... demonstration was going to bite her in the ass later. Oh well.
"So, Rachel, now that we're not in the middle of a firefight, what'd you get from all this?"
The small, green AI replied with a jovial tone,
"Well, from the estimated ship classes and numbers present, the Alpha Unknowns had the equivalent of a overstrength light strike group, while our Beta friends have what's left of a single light strike. As for mass, I've got no bloody clue, since both our friend's mass jumps around like a four-year-old with a pogo stick, weaponry look interesting, the Alpha guys had a lot of little dinky plasma cannon, while Beta seems to use what I guess might be the result of a MAC and a chaingun having a baby. They've got shields, but nothing like I've seen before. N-space drives are pretty standard fare, just simple fission torches using helium-3. Their sensors cleared about the same time ours did, anything else, we'll have to ask. Something on their ships is playing merry hell with my sensors, and I can't get a good look at 'em."
So, Miranda thought to herself, how to play this? Friendly, aggressive, what?
Oh, screw it, She snorted mentally. I'll just improvise. I wonder if John ever had this problem?
"Tell the fleet to hang back, formation papa romeo, and then put us alongside where you think their flag is, Rachel. Let's see if we can talk at the start for once, instead of having to go through a thirty-odd year long war first, shall we?"
Someone stifled a giggle at the sarcasm dripping from the last part of the admiral's statement.
- on -ke -
Where was he?
-u-Jo-ke up!
He remembered
The jarring, bouncing halt as the Warthog skidded across the hanger deck.
- e on, plea-
The half of the frigate, floating through space-
-Jo-ake Up!-
the words; "wake me, when you need me-
His eyes shot open.
"Are you alright, Rachel?"
The AI looked as though she was having a seizure, eyes (and head) darting around like she was visually tracking a thousand fireflies, while the normally languid streams of code that played across her figure ran faster than the eye could follow. Then as abruptly as it had begun, she returned to her normal self.
"No, I'm fine. It's just... that was a lot of data they just sent us, and learning twelve languages at once is.. disorienting, even for an AI. Thanks for your concern, Ma'am."
"Did you say twelve languages?" the Admiral was interested now.
"Yes, Ma'am. Apparently, these people have been doing the whole space exploration bit maybe twice as long as we have, and from the language pack alone, they've run into way more folks than we have. On the plus side, we don't have to spend days putting together translation protocols, our friends outside just provided them for us. There's still a ton of stuff I haven't looked over, I'm leaving it in cold-storage until we have more time. Shall I bring us up?"
"Yes. But hide anything ship-sensitive, I don't need some canny analyst over there reading all our displays."
"Yes, Ma'am."
"General, we've sent the standard first-contact package, so they should be able to translate now." The communications officer said, as the confirmation appeared on his screen.
"Thank you, lieutenant. I don't suppose Matriarch Liana is available?" asked a weary-sounding Septimus.
"Yes, She is." said the amused voice of the Matriarch from behind him. "and I am honored that you thought to call me, General Septimus."
"I am many things, Matriarch, but a diplomat is not one of them." Septimus replied wryly.
"Sir, Matriarch, the other ship is requesting two-way communication. Shall I put them up?" the ensign sounded nervous, not that I blame him, Septimus thought, That thing's bigger than we are by a fair margin.
"Very well. Bring this up on the main screen, and try to call the Counsel. They'll want to know about this."
The respective bridge screens lit up.
"I am Admiral Miranda Keyes of the United Nations Space Command. On behalf of of the United Earth Government, we bring a message of peace to the stars. To whom am I speaking?"
Miranda carefully kept hope out of her voice. One hostile power was bad enough, two would be a disaster.
"I am Matriarch Liana Ash'vari. I speak on behalf of the Asari Republics and the Citadel Counsel. We welcome you among the star-faring races of the galaxy, and would like to express our gratitude in your assistance with the Geth. Had you not intervened, thousands may have perished before aid could reach us." The slim, robed figure in the center of the bridge Miranda could see said, with as much ceremony as the greeting she had just given.
"Matriarch, my people take an extraordinarily dim view of anyone that attack civilian populations. I'd be happy to render whatever assistance I can, but I-" her speech was interrupted by a small, holographic figure.
"Ma'am, you're not gonna believe this, but I'm picking up a Covenant-war-era UNSC distress beacon."
"You're joking. It couldn't be..." Miranda's voice almost broke from the hope
"I think it is. All respect to first-contact and all, but if it is the Forward unto Dawn's other half, then we need to investigate." Rachel said.
Miranda turned back to the screen showing the bridge of the other ship.
"Matriarch, I'm afraid I have to cut this short. Our sensors just picked up an old distress beacon from one of ours not far from here. We'll need to go render assistance, although you're welcome to join us. Then I need to get in contact with the UEG and have them send an ambassador out here to open negotiations properly. If you'd like to help, I'll leave this line open so we can co-ordinate." Miranda said with an admiral's professionalism.
"I am certain the General will not mind rendering assistance. However, we do not detect it at all. Why is that?" the Matriarch asked somewhat puzzled.
"Rachel, give our new friends a quick history lesson, will you? Matriarch, you'll excuse me, I need to go to the Flag bridge and organize my fleet. Rachel will co-ordinate with you and answer any questions you have, unless the information is considered sensitive material." with that the admiral walked off the bridge at a brisk pace, and it faded from view, replaced by small, neon-green figure seated in a chair of the same color. Lines of text cascaded down her form, and she looked expectantly at the members of General Septimus's bridge crew in turn.
"Sooo... who's navigating? The Admiral's going to be ready to go soon, and I need to know who to feed telemetry to." Rachel said, bemused by the lack of any interaction. The she notice as the bridge crew jumped.
"Uhhh... guys? What's with the jumpiness?" she asked, confused.
"You're... You're not an AI, are you?" a tech asked nervously.
"as a matter of fact, I am. Specificly, I am ninth-generation UNSC Smart AI Rachel-one-one-six-two-five. Pleased to make your acquaintance." then she started "Oh! I never did answer the Matriarch's question! I apologize, co-coordinating a fleet like this one is distracting, even for me. Sorry, I'll get to it in a second. Why do you all look so nervous?" she asked, as most of the bridge went wide-eyed.
The Matriarch answered after a moment of tense silence.
"AI's are illegal in Citadel space. The first AI's, The Geth, were created by a race called the Quarians. They then rebelled, and we've been fighting raids and skirmishes with them ever since. The second, we made to help us understand why the Geth had rebelled, and it cost us nearly two-thousand lives to destroy when it came to the decision that organic life was superfluous. I imagine many of us are wondering why you haven't killed every living thing here." the Asari said, worry and fear evident below the diplomacy of her voice.
"I would never! I was created to save lives, not destroy them! in fact, to my knowledge, no UNSC AI has attacked anyone without provocation unless Rampant, and I'm a good six years from having to worry about that. To answer your earlier question about the distress beacon, in the Solar year 2525, a interstellar empire called the Covenant attacked the human colony of Harvest, using high-powered plasma weapons to reduce the surface to glass. For the next twenty-seven years, the technologically and numerically superior Covenant fleet would rampage though human space, reducing the population from trillions spread across nearly three-hundred worlds to about sixty-five billion on the handful of undiscovered colonies." horror was etched on the faces of everyone present at the shear scale of the carnage Rachel described.
"The Covenant were relentless, as they believed humans to be an affront to their gods, and they slaughtered any humans they came across. Eventually, the Covenant even attacked Earth, humanity's homeworld. However, at that time, the main warriors of the Covenant, a race called the Sangheli, discovered that the entire Covenant religion was a sham to keep the ruling class, a race called the San'shuum, in power. They then staged a bloody rebellion, along with about half of the other Covenant races. In the end, the separatist movement bought Earth and humanity enough breathing room to outfit new ships and launch an offensive. By the time we got done, the Covenant no longer existed. Unfortunately, the homeworlds and colonies of the separatist races were glassed by the Loyalist Covenant, and they've been secluded, rebuilding, ever since, with the exception of the Sangheli, who reestablished contact about five years ago. As a result of that war, all UNSC distress beacons are tight-wave encrypted radio that looks like stellar background radiation to anything but a UNSC AI, in order to avoid detection by hostile parties. So really, if you had detected it, I'd be amazed." the AI appeared to pause for breath, and took in the looks of shock on the faces of the bridge crew.
"obviously that's the short version, and even now our records of the individual battles are woefully incomplete, so don't get too frustrated when you see the official version. Now, I'm sorry to bother you with questions, as I'm sure you've got plenty of your own, but, I've just got to know. How in the name of sir Issac Newton are you changing you mass like that? It's giving me the AI equivalent of vertigo with my sensors this close."
The bridge crew looked around in confusion, before an Asari shot up, a look of triumph on her face.
"Ha! So that's why we couldn't see ME cores! There weren't any to see! You owe me five cred, Jax." a Turian next to her grumbled something unintelligible.
General Septimus looked amused at the antics of the junior officers. "Care to share with the rest of the bridge, Ensign?" he asked in a serious tone that belied the humor on his face.
"Oh.. uh yessir." the Asari said, suddenly remembering were she was. "Me and Jax, that is Ensign Jaxin, were arguing over why we couldn't detect their ME cores, even when they're right next to us. He thought it was because they had really good shielding, I, however, looked at the design of the ships we've seen, and they didn't look like designs that would be practical for ME propulsion at all. Our scopes automaticly filter ME field flux, so we assumed they used it, but the mass readings were enormous!" she paused, and drew in a breath. "So while Ensign Jaxin went over the sensor readings with a fine-tooth comb looking for core flux, I looked at that ship next to us from the perspective of how we might go about building a spaceship without ME drives. And it looks like I was right. They don't use Mass Effect at all! They must have devised intersteller transit on their own, oh goddess" the excitement was growing in her voice, "Imagine the benefit that a whole new drive system would be capable of!"
Rachel had been listening, looking as excited as the Asari "Interesting. So I'm guessing the 'Mass Effect' lets you alter the mass of an object, for example a starship, reducing it to nearly nothing?"
the Asari nodded.
"THAT IS SO COOL!" the AI burst out laughing. "An FTL drive in normal space! Oh man, the physics people are gonna love this!" she started laughing again.
"what' s so funny?" the Asari ensign asked, confused.
"oh, sorry about that. It's just that before the Shaw-Fujiwara drives, humanity had been trying to make normal-space FTL work for decades. According to current science, Normalspace FTL is impossible! Even the Forerunners never figured it out. Our own drive ruptures a hole into another dimension, which is 'smaller' than our own, and has corresponding points to anywhere in the universe. As long as you have really good math, you can put yourself anywhere. It's not instantaneous by a longshot, but it sure beats anything sublight." The AI looked like she was about to burst out laughing again, but suddenly she straightened up, cocked her head as though listening to something, then nodded.
"alright!" the humor had disappeared, replaced with a calm professionalism. "I've informed the Admiral of our situation. Since your ships are not equipped with Slipspace drives, you won't be able to piggyback on ours. Instead, we'll short-jump near the beacon, then drop a bouy that you'll be able to see. We'll wait for you, then proceed with rescue and recovery ops. Vigel actual out."
Codex
UNSC Nuclear Weapons of the Second-contact Era
Humanity had developed high-yield nuclear weapons even before spaceflight, and continues to build and develop them to this day. During the Human-Covenant War, nuclear weapons were one of the few weapons humanity possessed capable of destroying Covenant capital vessels, and were deployed whenever they were available. By the time of the Second-contact War, the UNSC employed a variety of types, yields, and sizes of nuclear-tipped missiles, listed below in ascending order of size and yield (which, by-and-large, roughly corresponded.)
Shiva-III Battlefield Man-Portable Tactical Nuke (MANPADTAC)
Yield: 10 Megatons
Dimensions: 15cm diameter, 45cm tall cylindrical capsule
Role: last-resort anti-material fortification charge (seeded in critical defective positions, then detonated by remote when a position is overrun)
Breaker-A Breacher Charge (SHPBRCH)
Yield: 20 Megatons
Dimensions: conical missile-mounted warhead, 49cm tall with 20cm base
Role: anti-shipping cluster missiles, preparation charge for breaching hardened targets.
Shiva-II Tactical Anti-Shipping Nuke (TACANTSHIP)
Yield: 400 Megatons
Dimensions: conical missile-mounted warhead, 70cm tall with 61cm base
Role: Tactical antiship missile, bomber-mounted. Intended to destroy small to medium sized hard-targets.
Breaker-B Superstructure Demolition Charge (SSDC)
Yield: 1 Gigaton
Dimensions: 61 cm tall, 61cm diameter missile-mounted cylinder
Role: intended for burst-detonation near large hard targets for EMP effects and general structural degradation.
Shiva-I Strategic Anti-shipping Nuke (STRATANTSHIP)
Yield: 60 Gigatons
Dimensions: 86cm diameter sphere
Role: missile-mounted anti-capital weapon, static remote-triggered or proximity-fused mines
NOVA Super-Strategic Anti-Material Bomb (NOVA bomb)
Yield: exact yield uncertain, estimated to be in excess of two Terratons
Dimensions: 182cm diameter sphere
Role: last-resort antifleet weapon. Only three were ever built, and one is decommissioned and put in a museum on reach. The other two were detonated to destroy Covenant fleets during the Human-Covenant War.
While other weapons (such as Plasma Cluster Warheads) filled the gaps in the UNSC's arsenal, Nuclear weapons were and continue to be an essential part of UNSC military strategy.
"Thank god, I thought I'd lost you." the blue-purple AI said, relief evident in her voice.
"What is it?" He asked, even as he ran the diagnostic on his armor.
"What's left of my sensors are seeing what looks like MACs and some light-yield nukes going off farther in-system- oh sorry, we've drifted into the inner periphery of a star system- so it looks like the cavalry is here. I hope. So, please come and get me? I'm really bored of sitting here unable to do anything."
"Cortana... why are you purple?"
"Oh..." the AI seemed shy "Promise you won't deactivate me?"
"Alright, I promise."
"It's been twenty-eight years since the Ark. I'm... I was Rampant for a while. I don't know what I am now, but it's something else. I'm- I think I'm stable. I don't know how, but I pulled out of Rampancy about six years ago. I think- well the only theory I have is that I went so crazy I became sane again."
"Okay." the hulking Spartan began to make careful, controlled movements that propelled him up the corridor leading to the hanger deck.
"Okay? I'm over twenty years past the time I was supposed to go insane and die, and that okay with you? I could be plotting to murder you in your sleep!" the small purple figure shouted at the Spartan.
"I trust you. And if you were, I'd never have woken up." the Spartan shot back.
Debris filled the corridor, making navigation difficult. Still, despite the floating detritus of a ship sheared in half, the Spartan was able to secure a battle rifle and SMG from amongst the scraps of metal, piping, and crates that filled the corridor. He was coming to the hanger deck.
"John! I'm getting a slipspace rupture nearly on top of us! Oh god, please, don't let anyone take me!" the AI sounded terrified. John moved faster. There's the hanger deck. He thought to himself as the entrance sped into view. I'd better get Cortana. The Spartan floated over to the console that contained the AI's chip.
"John..." the AI appeared on the console. "Are you absolutely sure about this? I have no idea what it'll-"
John interrupted the AI. "I. Trust. You. End of story."
she collapsed, defeated.
"Alright. But if something goes wrong-"
her voice, and hologram cut out as John removed the chip. He stared at it for almost half a minuet. Well, he thought as he raised the chip to its slot in his helmet, it can't be any worse than boot camp.
The chip slotted in.
a/n yes, that's it for this chapter! Your thoughts?
And yes this is dialog-heavy. It's just how I write. Most everyone reading this will have some idea of what a spaceship bridge looks like, either for ME or Halo or both, so other than noting important features, I'm not going to spend five paragraphs describing the bridge of a ship we're only going to see once.
Hex: yeah, I noticed those seemed to be pretty prevalent. When I started out making this story, I wanted to do something a little... different.
Darkfire: now now, remember that Shivas are variable payload. As the codex explains, there are several different yields and sizes in common use by the UNSC at this time.
Everybody: if you're wondering, the Normandy... will not be appearing. Why? Well, you'll just have to wait and find out, now won't you!
I will say this though: Nazurah's in for a big surprise!
