Three years is hardly sufficient time to forget the horrors inherent in war, and that is especially true when that war was fought not for the control of country or colony, but rather for the survival of the galaxy itself.
The Linara had been pulled from some abysmal reserve unit along the Asari's colonial militias; it was more than twice my age, and its already out-of-date systems and weapons had been stripped and rebuilt dozens of times during its lengthy term of service.
The youthful-appearing Asari that sat at the helm looked over her shoulder at him as they reached the coordinates specified in the SOS.
"Minimal heat signals, looks like everything beyond limited life support is down," Ophera said, bringing the battered frigate alongside the vessel, a merchant vessel of human origin, though the transponder codes had no match in the Linara's databases.
"Any signs of damage?" I asked, peering through glass of the cockpit to the dull grey ship as it drifted silently through the ivory-speckled darkness.
Ophera ran a scan of the ship's near-most side, shaking her head, "Beyond slight scaring, nothing to indicate a crippling hit or damage of any kind."
"Maybe they ran out of fuel," I said. The terminus was never a particularly nice place, but Aria T'loak and her organizations had always been available to help such stragglers, albeit at exuberant cost. After Cerberus and the reapers tore their way through the region however, running out of fuel or even a minor failure could spell death.
"Or maybe the reapers ran into them," Ophera responded, raising the second, far more grisly possibility.
During the months they had been patrolling the terminus, assignments such as this had become routine; it was all too common to find ships full of refugees dead from starvation or dehydration, their meagre supplies drained as they searched for asylum in the midst of galactic slaughter.
During the war it had been common practice to strip these ghost ships for much needed scrap and supplies, to which the reapers devised a sinister and vile trap. They would come upon these unlucky sods, boarding them before inflicting their horrific implants and modifications onto the passengers and crew before leaving the ships adrift for someone else to find.
With the firing of the Crucible, these traps had been rendered useless, but the interiors of the ships were still filled with the kinds of horrors and atrocities that made it difficult to sleep at night.
The newest of the Spectres, myself included, had been sent out to search for the vessels and clear them of any threats before sending for a scrap crew who would use the materials from the hulls and systems of the ships in the reconstruction process. It was boring, repetitive work, but it was necessary nonetheless.
The Linara pulled up alongside the vessel, the exterior lights shining along the side, revealing the dulled, worn writing that named the ship, MSV Petersburg.
The ship rattled as the gap between them was bridged by the airlock, the aged Asari ship's V.I. announcing the completion of the docking moments later.
I turned from the bridge, grabbing my pistol from the armoury as I passed through it on the way to the airlock. I absentmindedly checked the block of the pistol before slipping it onto my belt. I had changed it the month before, but the amount of boredom that accompanied my patrols had left me with plenty of time for target practice, and the chunk of metal had been worn down nearly halfway.
I brought with me two spare thermal clips, as well as the battered talon I'd been given after completing basic training. I paused momentarily at the massive, magnetic-locking door to the airlock, bringing up my omni-tool to adjust my amps to the combat setting.
I fought not to hurl as I entered the abandoned ship, the retching stench of decaying flesh wafting through the air in a heavy, invisible fog. The source became evident after only a few more steps, where piles of bluish-purple mush lay piled along either side of the blockish corridors of the ship.
The scene was one that I had seen far too many times: the crew had been killed by the reapers at some point during the invasion, their bodies drained of resources and their humanity replaced with gruesome augments and machinery. When the reaper command signal had been deactivated, the implants would've deactivated and detonated, melting the flesh around the wires and reducing the husks to semi-liquid piles of singed wiring and gelatinous glop.
"Damn," I said under my breath, debating whether or not to go back and get a rebreather.
"Reapers?" Ophera asked knowingly over the headset.
"Yeah," I responded, keeping my pistol extended in front of me, waving the torch back and forth through the dim lighting afforded by the emergency fission core, "I feel bad for the clean-up crew on this one."
I made my way through the ship room by room, finding no signs of life apart from the grisly remains of the former crew. The Petersburg was a sizable freighter, with three decks to clear. Each room had been filled to the brim with bedding and supplies, most of it unused. It was likely they had fled from a colony with as many people they could carry, only to fall prey to the reapers in the black of space, where the refugees the crew had tried to help would simply be doomed to their meaningless deaths.
"Captain?" the Asari's voice cut in, making me twitch at the suddenness of it.
"What is it?" I responded, keeping my voice low.
"We circled the ship, there's a fighter docked on the bottom deck," she said, "unknown origin."
"What?" I demanded, "Why didn't you mention this before?"
"It's completely powered down, no thermals," she explained, "We barely noticed it in a visual scan."
"Then someone else found this ship before us," I said, looking into the darkness around me more carefully.
"Maybe it was during the war?" Ophera suggested.
"Unlikely," I responded, "there weren't any ships with fighter support patrolling this sector, not from council space at least."
"One of Aria's, then?"
"Maybe," I said, not satisfied with that explanation, "pull away and keep your distance; power down all unnecessary systems and play dead."
"Roger that," she said, and the ship again rumbled as the Linara detached itself.
"Be ready for anything," I said, moving forward again, "I don't like this."
I made my way down from the command deck and the darkened bridge to the crew quarters. What little light there had been on the first floor was completely gone in the second, with only the small light mounted to the barrel of my pistol to find my way. The creaking of the metal around me began grating on my nerves, and the viscous fluid that seemed to douse every surface filled the air with the vile stench of death.
I made my way toward the panic room tucked away behind the mess hall, my torch casting eerie shadows across the walls. A low moan suddenly filled the air, inhuman tones reached by an unseen throat. I swung my pistol towards the source of the noise, crouching down into a firing stance.
Across the room from me, a pair of dimly glowing blue eyes stared back, the torchlight illuminating the husk's face. It groaned again, advancing slowly with a limping gait.
It had been three years since I'd last seen one, but it was quite akin to my memory: dull, bluish-purple skin, flesh interwoven with wires and tubes. Its limbs were oddly proportioned, with the arms hanging far lower than normal as it crawled along the floor towards me, skittering over the tables and counters in an insect-like scurry.
I've used the same pistol since the first day of the reaper invasion. The Carnifex hand cannon overheated easily, it ate through thermal clips like no other, and was a bitch to clean; I've kept it for one reason, and one reason only: the boom.
In a fraction of a second, a sliver of metal was sheared off the tungsten block, superheated and liquefied by the micro-fusion core in the grip, reduced to negative mass by the mass effect generator that ran along the barrel, and shot through the air at supersonic speed.
The husk's head was turned into a greyish vapour in an instant, the place it had previously occupied now filled with bits of flesh and blood that hung in the air for a few brief moments before falling to the floor. The husk's newly-headless corpse followed shortly after, falling to the floor in a graceless lump.
"I've got active reaper ground forces here," I said over my headset, swinging my flashlight around in front of me, casting ghostly shadows through the room, every slight noise ringing heavily as the gunshot echoed through the cramped quarters.
Ophera began to respond, but her voice was cut off as the second husk struck my side. It took me off my feet completely, inhuman strength cracking my ribs even through my armour.
My pistol was torn from my hand, a rogue shot spinning off as it slapped against the floor. The husk lay atop me, its gangly limbs assaulting me in wild flairs, each blow against my upraised arms sending waves of tortuous pain to my brain.
The creature opened its maw and screamed at me, agonized metallic screams obscuring all thought as I fought to survive on instinct alone, skill lost to blind terror. The thing's teeth descended towards my throat, my arms useless against the mechanical strength of the reaper.
My training and experience returned in an instant, the small pockets of element zero scattered throughout my body coming to life as I focused on the amps in my forearms. A positive current turned the bulky creature on top of me as light as a feather, and I shoved it back viciously, holding it at arm's length.
I focused on a region in the thing's midsection, extending my control over the raw fabric of the universe to include the husk, manipulating its mass on an atomic level. I tore the creature in half, raw physical strength aided by the material that formed the basis for all of galactic civilization. Blood, gore and mechanics rained down on me as I tore the creature asunder, its screams replaced by deathly silence as the bisected thing flopped to the ground, covering the dull metal with bluish fluid.
I sat on the ground in the creature's entrails for a moment, my breath coming heavy as my ribs fought against the strain of my lungs. My recovery was ended by another low groan, this time closer and more direct than the first.
The third husk ran at me from the darkness, scrambling between bipedal gait and a crawling sprint as it clamoured towards me. I looked to my weapon, useless where it lay at the base of a bulkhead several feet away.
I raised an arm, the familiar blue glow of the mass effect field enveloping the bruised limb as I extended it towards the creature.
Before I could destroy the thing, however, an invisible, silent force took its head from its shoulders in a swift, clean blow. A fourth creature appeared from the darkness just as the newly decapitated one had, ignoring the prone forms of its compatriots and rushing towards me.
The creature was halted as its leg was bisected at the knee, a burst of blue-black blood spraying outwards as the thing fell to the floor, screaming bloody murder as it was crippled.
The air shifted and shimmered, and a masked figure appeared out of the air, the feminine form revealed as the cloaking field faded. The Quarian stood above me, hardly a foot away, a modified raptor sniper rifle resting on one shoulder and a strange pistol in hand. She looked at the felled husk through her visor for a moment before advancing on it, two shots turning the thing's head to mist in a silent burst. She scanned the room quickly before extending a hand to me.
Her enviro-suit was significantly different to those I had seen before, with many modifications suited for combat and stealth ranging from an improved cloaking generator to multiple hardened plates covering vital organs.
"Yana'Valar vas Finreal," she said by ways of introduction, hauling me to my feet with surprising strength, "Spectre."
I nodded towards the two husks she had dispatched in thanks, "Captain Aetius Tarron."
"I know," She said, cradling her rifle calmly, "If you hadn't been a Spectre, I would've let them kill you."
"Glad to see that not all the Spectres are as heartless as I was lead to believe," I said sarcastically, retrieving my pistol from where it had fallen before contacting my ship again.
"Ophera, do you copy?" I asked, adjusting my headset from where it had strayed during the fight.
"Shit, there you are," she said, sighing, "I was afraid I was going to have to go over there and teach you how to fight."
"Surrounded by comedians," I grumbled, using my omni-tool to send a dosage of medi-gel through my armour's medical sub-system, the pain from my broken ribs subsiding immediately, "I've confirmed contact with active reaper forces and discovered the owner of that fighter."
"I heard," the asari said, "you should ask her if she'll sign my gun."
The Quarian crouched over the bodies of the husks, prodding them with the barrel of her rifle before rising, "What are you doing here?" She asked.
Yana'Valar was one of the so-called 'legends' of the new generation of Spectres, chosen for her experience against the geth before and after the reaper invasion. She was the closest thing the Migrant fleet had to an assassin. It was rumoured she had even operated freely in geth space years before the Quarian attempt to retake the system. During the assault on London she had over three hundred confirmed kills, all the while with a bullet wound and major infection.
"We picked up this ship's distress call while on patrol," I answered, "Though I'm much more interested why you'd be here."
"I heard rumours of active reaper units along the edge of terminus space," she said, "clearly, more than rumours."
"So that led you to this ship?" I asked sceptically.
"I first encountered the active units on a moon in the hades nexus, followed a transponder code to an asteroid belt near omega, and finally, here," She said, ejecting a thermal clip from her rifle, "I was working on killing them when you blundered in here."
I ignored the comment and focused on the task at hand, "Have you figured out what's keeping them active?"
"Not yet," she said, "whatever it is, it's in the panic room."
I followed her as she knelt next to the door, the magnetic lock holding the bulkhead tightly closed. She tore open a control panel at the side of the doors and began working through the wires.
The magnetic lock failed with a shuddering clunk, allowing the thick metal bulkheads to slide open slightly. I forced my hands into the gap, pushing the doors open with minimal resistance.
The room was devoid of the standard survival gear and emergency supplies, replaced by a single computer bank. It was built with the same proportions and designs as reaper tech, but the materials and minute details seemed off in some strange way.
I ran my omni-tool over its surface, the scanning process running silently for a moment before returning with a blank report.
"It doesn't match any known schematics," I said, "but it defiantly looks like reaper tech."
The Quarian spectre knelt beside the machine cautiously. Even if it was only a simple computer, which seemed unlikely, the dangers reaper tech posed even in dormant state were not to be underestimated.
She began searching the surface of the machine for some sort of access port or control panel, before a dark red holographic display opened up at the front of the machine. Simultaneously, a series of low, fluctuating tones filled the room, the notes resonating so deeply that the metallic plates that made up the hold began vibrating eerily.
The display of the thing showed only a few small symbols, all of which were completely indecipherable to us and our omni-tools. I established a link to the Linara, transferring the data we'd recorded to the ship's VI for analysis.
Ophera's voice burst through the silence in my headset after several seconds, "Whatever you found, the VI is having none of it; aside from the fact that it's some kind of signal relay, it's a bust."
"Well it's more information than I've gotten during three months of searching, so it'll have to do," Yana said, stepping back from the platform and opening her own omni-tool.
"Major?" She said, speaking to some unseen person on the other end of the comm. channel, "Come back around for pickup, and don't mind the piece of shit ship flying around, they're friendlies" she said, receiving a 'hey' of protest from the asari pilot.
The atmosphere of the ship shifted, the familiar fluctuations in the fabric of space sending my amps into a frenzy as the Quarian spectres ship exited FTL less than a hundred kilometres from the desolate human ship.
The two of us made our way out of the panic room as the rattling of the docking mechanism started working once more. Even the curt glances afforded to me by the miniscule windows spaced about the hull, I could see that the Quarian's vessel was far superior to the Linara.
As a cabal, the constant travel from sector to sector had given me an extensive knowledge of ships, enough so that the hierarchy hadn't thought twice to put me at the helm of a cruiser; but it hadn't been until I'd been subjected to the constant running and gunning that constituted survival during the reaper invasion that I'd truly developed an appreciation for a good ship.
The ship, SSV Verdun, was not quite top of the line, but it was pretty damn close; it was a large freighter, large enough to be considered a cruiser had it been given a few more inches of armour and a couple more guns. As it was, the ship looked fit enough to take on a small fleet of ships like the Linara, with a set of two gun decks on either side with a main gun strong enough to give all ships short of a reaper cause for alarm.
We reached the airlock just as the doors opened. A pair of alliance-uniform wearing soldiers moved in to secure the ship, casting cautious looks at me as they moved further into the ship.
"Alliance?" I asked Yana, nodding meaningfully towards the two soldiers.
"You know how it is," She said, ushering in a pair of hazmat-suited engineers forward into the ship, "The Council loves their little publicity stunts: they get to show off their agents working with different races, show how unified the galaxy is."
I nodded. At the time I had been made captain of the Linara, I had assumed the tired asari frigate had simply been the only one available, but over the months of reconstruction, the council had made no effort to find a replacement. I could hardly blame the council for their attempts at uniting the races, after all, if not for that cohesion, the galaxy would've been lost.
"Point me towards this mystery of yours, cap."
From the Alliance vessel on the far side of the airlock, a tall, modestly dishevelled human approached with an expansive toolbox in one hand and a cup of coffee the other, steam wafting off the ceramic mug.
"Major," Yana said dryly, "glad to see you brought your breakfast."
The man shrugged, "what can I say, I can hardly be expected to work on reaper tech with sleep in my eyes."
She shook her head and sighed under the environmental mask, "I have to send a report to the council," she turned on me, "show Major Ward to the device."
I didn't bother to protest being given such a menial task, as the Quarian was already turning away into her ship before I answered. The human major looked at me strangely for a minute before falling into step behind me through the gelatinous muck that coated the ship's interior.
"Don't worry about Yana," the human said, his accent reminding me of a few humans I'd met during the attack on London, "she plays the tough girl role and we all play along, but underneath she's a real softie."
"Really," I said, thinly veiling my sarcasm, "she seems such a caring, loving soul."
The man laughed heartily, "Don't get me wrong, she can kick ass with the best of 'em, but she's never hurt anyone that didn't deserve it."
The man caught up with my longer stride quickly, intermittently sipping from his coffee as he tried to avoid the puddles of liquefied husks.
"You can actually drink that with this smell?" I asked, gesturing towards the brownish purple goo that seeped across the floor.
"An Irishman can drink anything under any conditions, mate," he laughed.
"What?" I said, confused.
"Just a joke," he explained, "I smelled worse during the war, got used to living, breathing and sleeping in shite."
I nodded in understanding as the lights of the ship came on in a burst, the Major's radio relaying a message from one of the marines that had activated the generator. I led the way to the crew quarters, stepping casually over the corpses of the husks that still lay in the middle of the floor.
"Damn," the Major said, gesturing to the husk I had ripped in half, "I was wondering how you'd gotten that much blood on yourself."
I looked down, surprised to see that the silver and black surface of my armour was coated in a near-complete layer of the bluish-purple blood of the husks, as well as small bits of flesh that had clung to the metal.
I focused on my amps, surrounding myself with a biotic field; closing in on my armour and forcing the filth and flesh away from me, turning the semi-dried gore into a vapour before depositing the mess onto the floor next to the husk.
Ward whistled, impressed, "never seen a Turian biotic before."
"We're rare," I said, pushing forward into the panic room, and gesturing towards the pseudo-reaper device, "and we don't get out of Turian space often."
The Major turned away from me, setting his coffee on the floor and kneeling next to the thing, still emitting its odd, fluctuating tone.
"Ohh…" he said, prodding at the holographic display tentatively, "this is quite the find."
"You know what it is?" I asked, excited.
"Not a bloody clue…" he said, "it's sure as hell not a reaper device."
"What is it then?" I asked, watching as the thing responded to his touch and the prodding of his omni-tool.
"Like your initial report said," he answered, "it's some kind of signal booster, but if there's no reapers to provide a signal, it'd be useless."
"So what kind of signal is it?" I asked as the doors opened and Yana entered, moving to stand over the Major.
She nodded at me then gestured towards the door, "the Council wants your report as well."
I began to head for the door, stopped by Ward's next sentence.
"It's not a reaper signal," he said, "at least, not one I've ever seen. I can, however, find out where it's coming from."
"Enlighten us," Yana said, crossing her arms impatiently.
He went to work with his omni-tool before pausing, his brow furrowing in confusion, "that's odd," he said.
"What?" Yana asked.
"This signal is coming from way out on the galactic rim," he said, "I mean, it's on the very edge of the galaxy, nothing for light-years around."
"So what does that tell us?" I asked, turning back to face them.
"Haven't a clue," the major said, shrugging, "but it does rule out pretty much anything besides the reapers."
"Exactly," Yana said, "and if the reapers are still operating in any capacity, we need to find out how and stop them."
"Wonderful," I said, sighing heavily, "more reapers, or at least something as powerful as them."
"The Council is waiting for your report," the Quarian said pointedly, gesturing towards the upper decks.
I left, slipping past the crew of engineers that moved to transport the device to the Verdun, and made my way to the bridge of the defunct human ship. I tinkered with the console until I managed to get a single communication channel running.
"Ophera," I said over the newly established comm. channel, "can you link the Linara's QEC to the Petersburg's bridge?"
"Establishing connection," she said, the antiquated holographic projector of the human ship firing up as she did so, soon projecting the images of two of the councillors, the Salarian and Asari representatives.
"Councillors," I said, nodding respectfully.
"Agent Tarron," the matriarch said, an edge of confused apprehension made present in her tone, "When Yana'Valar made her report I found myself doubting her claims; I find it very disconcerting to see that they were true."
"What do you mean?" I asked, annoyance tingeing my response.
"You were assigned to patrol the relays at the edge of the terminus," the Salarian councillor elaborated, "yet as we speak you are only a single jump from Omega."
"I discovered the Petersburg's distress signal through the relay networks and went to investigate," I said, "I was under the impression that I was the only spectre outside citadel space."
"It is not your job to know the operations of the other spectres," the Salarian councillor cut in, "as it is; we find it suspicious more than anything that you are so far from your posting."
"Would you prefer I return to Palaven?" I asked, my anger finally boiling over, the weeks upon weeks of mundane patrols having worn down my patience for these politicians.
"What we would like, Captain," the Asari councillor said sharply, "is for you to do your job."
"If my job is to do the same patrols any ship can do," I said harshly, "I think I would prefer to resign as a spectre and go back to the cabals."
"Now listen here…" the Asari began.
"No," I said, cutting her off, "I'm a spectre, not some soldier to be sent on pointless errands."
The two of them stared at me, incredulous of my outburst, "I'm going to follow this signal back to its source," I continued, "and I'll deal with it, with or without Yana's help, and if you don't like it, you can blow it out your ass."
I cut off the transmission before they could respond, leaning back against the bulkhead behind me and sighing heavily.
"Impressive," came the quarian's voice from behind me, "I wonder whether they'll fire you, try you for treason or have you killed first."
"They can do any and all of them when I get back," I said, not bothering to face her, "either of them is preferable to sitting around doing nothing."
"Hmm, maybe you're not as pathetic as I thought," she said, stepping off the bridge and into the airlock just as the Verdun's engines started up to leave. Just before the thick metal doors of the airlock shut, she called out again, "you can come along if you keep up, if not, enjoy the severance package."
The Verdun detached itself and drifted away, leaving the small human vessel silent once more.
"Ophera?" I said, my voice echoing through the darkened metal corridors, "I need a pickup."
"Already on my way," she said, "ETA two minutes."
"We've got to make a stop on Omega," I said, stepping forward to wait by the airlock, "I get the feeling we won't be seeing civilization for a long while."
"You're calling Omega civilization?" Ophera said over the radio, chuckling, "things really are going to be bad, aren't they?"
"Yeah," I said, allowing myself to smile at her joke, even if the feeling was bittersweet, "I can hardly wait."