The Effect of Diaspora

by ReaderMike

In 2157 PD, A Turian patrol attacked a newly discovered race for attempting to activate a prime relay. Unfortunately, the race in question had been in space nearly as long as the Asari have. Unlike the Asari, this wasn't a race of diplomats. This race had a fleet far more vast than the combined citadel races, and the Turians managed to piss them off. Eventual Slash.

2. First Contact

Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect nor Honorverse. I am merely throwing the two worlds together. Any original characters, however, are mine.

Okay so I've just managed to embarrass myself. I didn't realize that I titled the entire story The Effect of Diaspora Prologue. That was the title of the document I uploaded . Well I fixed it.

TNS vs TLS

Okay in this chapter you'll be seeing TNS vessels and TLS vessels. TNS ships are from the Royal Torch Navy, TLS are from the Terran League Navy.

Also, I've played ME2 and ME3 since I have a PS3, but I have not played ME…so yeah if I cut out a bunch of things from ME that's probably the reason why.

No beta so forgive errors

-TED-

Chapter 1: First Contact

Shala'Raan vas Tonbay hadn't known what she had been expecting. True the Patrol Fleet scouts had discovered a newly opened secondary relay, but those relays opened up all the time. She and the rest of the Migrant Fleet were preparing to enter a resource heavy planetary system, one that was uninhabited but Feda'Gazu vas Idenna's report of unfamiliar dreadnoughts in the system worried her.

True the Heavy Fleet could probably take them on, but there would be heavy casualties, and casualties were something that the Migrant Fleet could not have. Yet the reason why those vessels were in the system puzzled her. According to Feda'Gazu the ships were clustered around the prime relay, yet they were not activating it. In fact, the dreadnoughts didn't even produce a mass effect field.

First contact with a new race might prove to be a boon for the Migrant Fleet. If they could set up trade relations before these people could be colored against the Quarian people, then perhaps they'd find a valuable ally, something the Migrant fleet sorely lacked. Thus the reason why Shala'Raan was sitting amongst the Admirality Board as the Conclave debated.

"Admirals, what do we know about this new species?" Vari'Paniful vas Iktomi asked looking directly at Admiral Rael'Zorah vas Alarei.

"From what Ysin'Mal vas Idenna has reported, this new species does not appear to have Mass Effect technology, but their propulsion systems are quite advanced. They utilize some sort of high stressed gravity band in order to move their ships. His scout ship the Cyniad could not get close enough to gather further information on the vessels. Even so, there are reports of civilian traffic in the area, and their civilian ships seem to be built on an even more massive scale than their warships," he said sitting back.

That caused a stir within the Conclave. The members were excited to hear that the civilian ships were more massive than the warships. Perhaps opening up a dialogue with these species would allow them to purchase a few of them, allowing the Migrant Fleet to lessen the strain on the Liveships. But there was a downside, this species didn't have mass effect technology.

"Should we report our findings to the Citadel?" A conclave member asked. There was a possibility that the Migrant Fleet might be punished for not spreading information about this new race to the rest of the galaxy at large, but then again what had the Citadel races done for them?

Admiral Zaal'Koris vas Qwib Qwib rubbed the chin of his suit in thought for a moment. "What we could do is send a delegation to meet with this race, and at the same time send a ship through the relay to contact a Turian patrol. Shala'Raan do you happen to have the coordinates of the last Turian patrol we encountered?"

Shala'Raan bit her lip, not that anyone could see it of course, as she thought back. The encounter with the Turian patrol had almost caused an incident thanks to Admiral Han'Gerrel vas Neema's actions. Still, it was a good thing she had kept at least a scout vessel in the system to keep an eye on them; a precaution to ensure the Turians didn't decide to take a few potshots at the Migrant Fleet. "The Sayya should be heading to the rendezvous coordinates soon. If we send a scout ship now, the Sayya should be able to link with the Turian patrol in a few hours."

"Then that is what I propose us do. We'll send two ships, one to make contact with these aliens and one to inform the Council," Zaal'Koris said. He could tell that Han'Gerrel didn't seem happy, but Rael'Zorah was definitely keeping him in check. He wanted these people to open up trade with the Migrant Fleet, get them new ships, maybe if they were lucky even help them settle a new planet. He knew Rael'Zorah and Han'Gerrel saw it differently, that they wished to form a military alliance with these newcomers and use their aid to take back Rannoch.

"I am not comfortable sending a ship to these aliens," Shala'Raan said eventually, causing a murmur in the Conclave. "I know we are in approval of contact, but we do not know enough. Perhaps if the vessel we send is one of the smaller ones…or a scout ship crewed by volunteers?" she suggested. It was a foregone conclusion that they were going to make contact, but doing so safely was more important than anything else. The Migrant Fleet could ill afford to lose even one ship, and yet finding a new ally seemed definitely worth the risk.

-TED-

It was a very exciting time to be alive. Hannah Shepard knew that much as she looked around at the wide eyed crew around her. Captain Shepard was the CO of the TNS Shilo, commodore Hackett's flagship. To be honest her squadron was nothing more than a glorified picket force consisting of a three heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, four destroyers, and eight frigates. True four of the eight frigates were spider-drive vessels, and thus vastly different in function than their impeller drive sisters, yet the mission they were given, while important, was tediously boring. Their mission was simple, they were to provide escort for the three survey ships that were studying the prime relay, and serve as the honor guard for TLN Prometheus-the prototype survey ship with a dark energy core that would activate the relay-or end up reporting the Prometheus' destruction, but that was not the cause of the excitement that threatened to consume her squadron.

An alien vessel had been detected scouting their fleet. This vessel had been caught by TNS Philippi during a routine patrol of the outer system. The small spider-drive frigate's stealth technology was the only reason she'd been able to detect the scout, and the mothership from which it had come. Wisely, Hackett had ordered the squadron to adopt a wait and see approach. It was unknown whether these aliens were friendly or not. Regardless, it was an exciting time because sooner or later mankind would be making its thirteenth first contact with an intelligent race, and the second first contact with a space faring one.

"Skipper! We've got a contact heading in on the elliptical," Jason Cruz exclaimed. The young astrogator was fairly large, reflecting his San Martin heritage. Born on one of the heaviest gravity worlds known to man, San Martinos tended to be large and had very dense skeletons and muscles, making them some of the most physically powerful members of the human race. He was one of several officers who were serving in Torch's navy at the behest of the Grand Alliance. "Vessel is on intercept course with us ma'am, bearing zero niner seven. I'm reading dark energy and fusion torch emissions."

"Is it the same contact as before?" Hannah asked sitting up in her chair, looking over the readouts almost excitedly. She could barely restrain herself. Here she was, a mere captain, on the verge of the first contact with a space faring race.

"Aye Ma'am, it's the mothership. TNS Philippi just confirmed an energy profile match," Henry Benton, Hannah's diminutive com officer replied.

"Ma'am CIC makes its energy signatures about the equivalent of a destroyer," Alex X, great grandson of the infamous Jeremy X said from his readout over at tactical.

"Right, let's com Maria Mancini's science team and somebody wake up the commodore, I don't think he is going to want to miss this. But to be on the cautious side, let's sound GQ and generate an intercept vector. We don't know if these guys are friendly yet," she said grinning. Oh it paid to wake up an hour or so before the commodore, and she knew she was going to have a hard time resisting shoving this in his face sometime later. How he'd regret not being on his flag deck when the aliens came back.

-TED-

This was stupid, this was beyond stupid, and she was going to say so at the next conclave meeting. Shala'Raan was not a happy woman, not at all, but it was her duty as an admiral of the Migrant Fleet to complete this mission, especially since the others were not capable of doing it. The debate on who to send to represent the Quarian people had gotten ugly very quickly, it had been a toss up between Rael'Zorah and Zaal'Koris. The two ideologies clashing again and again, if the Idenna hadn't offered itself to be sent back to the system she didn't know how long the debate would have taken. But when she expressed her worries about how first contact should be made, the conclave seemed to align to make her the one to make it, since she at least would be cautious about the whole thing.

"Admiral! Energy signatures on the lead dreadnought are rising! It's on an intercept course," Ysin'Mal's voice called to her from the far side of the room. Shala shifted in her seat, which was normally set aside for Ysin'Mal but the man had been adamant that the admiral had to sit in the captain's chair.

"They must have seen our approach," Shala mused, but how? Could it be those odd gravity impulses they'd been detecting had actually been some sort of sensor probe? "Communications, prepare the first contact package for transmission."

-TED-

"Ma'am we're receiving a data package," Sharon D, formerly D-42A/213-4/4, stated from her seat at communications.

"Very good Ms. D, I'll inform commodore Hacket," she said as she went to screen the man's flag bridge.

-TED-

"We've got the transmission Hannah, good work," Commodore Steven Hackett of the Torch Royal Navy stated as he looked over the read out. "What can you make of this Mrs. Mancini?" he asked.

Maria Mancini was Erewhonese; even so, she strangely came of oriental stock by way of her Beowulfan mother. The blend of Erewhonesian blood and Beowulfan gave the average sized woman a very attractive figure. Currently the dark haired woman was pouring over the screens of Hackett's com officer as she looked over the files. She'd been brought aboard immediately after the first sighting due to her expertise in xenolinguistics. "I can't be completely sure, but I think that they are sending us prime numbers first…and this seems to be some sort of alphabet. I seriously hope that they have some sort of translation device, because I'd need a full team to decipher anything more elaborate than this."

"Right what do you recommend we reply with?" he asked as he looked at her.

"I would suggest a video recording. Start off simple, count to ten on your fingers, say a greeting, your name and rank. We have to get them a sample of our language, without it communication is going to be extremely difficult. If we have to, we can resort to sending mathematical equations to each other and build up off of there."

-TED-

"They've sent a video response."

"Put it up, and pull it through our translators," Shala said as she looked at the video of the strange humanoid in front of her. It had blue eyes and a fair complexion, something similar to Asari or Salarians perhaps. No hide or exoskeleton, so their world was probably less harsh than Tuchanka or Paloven. Colder perhaps? Because the creature had a head covering of what looked to be fur. Five digit fingers like the Batarians and Asari. "What is it doing?" she asked as she watched the creature say a word and put up a finger.

"I think..I think it is counting Admiral," Feda'Gazu said as he looked at the strange creature before him.

"Maybe it is…a basis for our translators? From what I see they use base ten math, now it is pointing at itself…a name?" Admiral Daro'Xen vas Moreh stated as she looked over the videofeed. As much as Shala didn't like the slightly disturbing woman, Daro'Xen was their foremost scientist, in fact the scientist one would go to for anything. If it were not for her narrow-minded view of the world, she could have been Admiral of Research and Development, instead of Admiral of Special Projects. In essence, her lack of communication skills was what led her to being the second in charge of the science divisions, her immediate superior being Admiral Rael'Zorah.

-TED-

Hackett sat back in his command chair utterly exhausted. They'd spent the last few hours sending messages back and forth with the aliens. They'd learned quite a bit about each other, first that the Quarians were a tri-digit species, bipedal, and constantly wore skinsuits. They were a bi-gendered race, and while it was obvious that the Quarians utilize base six math, and it was obvious that they had come across ten digit species in the past. They did have translators, but it took hours of correlations before their translator could analyze English well enough for accurate translation.

He grinned as he leaned back, well at least the Quarians were a vocal species. He remembered reading about the extreme difficulty the first crews had speaking with the Medusans, who used pheromones, sign language, and certain sounds to communicate. Still that was better than the complexity of dealing with the treecats, who were a telempathic race and therefore hadn't utilized sound at all, and who also had decided to hide their intelligence for almost five hundred years.

Still they had learned quite a bit, like that there were ten other spacefaring species that formed a government known as the Citadel Council, and that activating a prime relay was actually a crime. Hackett wasn't sure that activating this prime relay constituted a crime since it was occurring in a different race's sovereign space, one that had yet to make contact with the Council. The Quarian ambassador, one Admiral Shala'Raan vas Tonbay, had told him that the Quarians had sent a ship to inform a Turian patrol about making first contact with a new race.

The ambassador and her retinue were going to be boarding the survey ship the TNS Josepha Zachary and would be heading towards Shanxi to continue talks. It seemed that one of the primary missions of the diplomatic team was to open up trade for new ships. Apparently the Quarians were a space-locked race. When asked why, the Admiral reluctantly had informed them of her races rather depressing history.

He didn't need a treecat to know that the woman's people were desperate for any sort of help. From what information she had managed to share, the Quarian people had once been a Council race, but that a mass uprising of a renegade AI had devastated their population and the rest of the galaxy had left them to rot.

Furthermore, any attempt the Quarians had so far made to settle on a new world had faced opposition from Council races, they'd actually been evicted from several planets they'd tried to settle in favor for other races. The only options left to the Quarians were either to retake their home world, or risk the more dangerous trip into uncharted territory in desperate search for a new homeworld. It angered Hackett that the Council could be so callous in regards to one of their allies, that they'd abandon them in their time of need through no fault of their own.

He was sure that their request for more starships in exchange for their expertise would go through. Hell, their dark energy drives, or mass effect cores as Shala'Raan termed them, were going to be enough to pay for as many ships as they needed. If Torch were to become the pinnacle of mass effect technology, it would bring great wealth to the star system, and of course the rest of the Grand Alliance would get the technology, but only after Torch shifted through it first.

It wasn't that Torch wanted to jilt the rest of its allies, and even if Torch became the main manufacturer of this technology, Torch didn't have the scientific base to develop it quickly. Manticore would probably be brought in, and with them both Grayson and Haven. Fortunately, it would be Torch that had the trade agreement with the Quarians, and therefore they would have the tech edge. The Terran League and the Andermani Empire would have to play catch up, and he was sure the three main factions of humanity would do their damndest to ensure that the four hundred or so unaffiliated systems, and the Renaissance Factor, remained in the dark.

In fact, the actions of the Council made Hackett wary of them. From what he had read from the so far incomplete codex, he discovered that the Council was quite similar to the defunct Solarian League, and any comparison to that defunct government was not a good one. In fact it seemed that the Council was worse. The Rachni had been forced into extinction, the Krogan had been inflicted with a sterility plague, and the Quarians were basically forced to live in dying ships. All these actions would have horrified the Solarian League, considering how harshly the League had punished Barstool for wiping out the Amphors, Barstool still facing the consequences of the original settlers actions almost seventeen hundred years later.

He didn't even want to think about the Batarians and the Slave Trade. He knew that no matter what the Council did, Torch at the very least would never become a Council race. Not while the Batarians were there. Fortunately, that decision was well above his pay-grade so he didn't have to worry about it. He looked at his repeater and smiled as he watched TNS Josepha Zachary make its way on a best time course for the Shanxi system, even as the Quarian vessel returned on the trajectory it came in on.

"Commodore Hackett! Captain Shepard's detected a fleet of ships entering the system!" Isabella X stated from her position at the comms.

"It seems that the Turian patrol is here," Hackett said as he looked over at the new set of emissions on his repeater.

"Sir! The Relay is activating!"

-TED-

Codex Entries:

Genetic Tag: Slaves created by Manpower Inc. are born with an ID tag imbedded on their tongues to permanently ensure that all knew that said person was a slave. The ID tag is made up of four components: (Line)-(Variant)(Gender)/(Batch)-(Place in order of birth). Most first generation immigrants to Torch bear these ID Tags in correlation to their lives as slaves and therefore harbor a deep hatred towards Manpower Inc. and any planetary system that supports the slave trade.

Impeller Drive: By using a pair of impeller rings at the fore and end of a craft, a ship could then tame gravity waves in order to propel itself forward. This effect takes the form of a pair of highly stressed gravity bands above and below the ship, since these bands of gravity are super condensed and stressed they are nigh impregnable giving both civilian and military craft an impenetrable shield above and below them. The drive while useful in n-space is deadly in hyperspace and must therefore be reconfigured into a Warshawski sail to safely traverse hyperspace.

Medusans: Native to the planet Medusa in the Basilisk system, Medusans are a tri-symmetrical race who evolved on a moss dependant ecosystem. They are a client race of the Star Empire of Manticore, and have only recently begun exploring space. Orignally discovered while in their bronze age, Manticore oversaw their development over the centuries to ensure that being uplifted by modern technology did not destroy their shamanistic culture.

Renaissance Factor: A political faction of humanity. Originally a puppet arm of the Mesan Alignment, following the destruction of the Alignment, the Renaissance Factor remained as a small group of star systems. The other three factions, the Andermani Empire, Grand Alliance, and Terran League, all try to ensure that the Factor doesn't acquire the tech edge to become a dominant power in the galaxy, though it would be centuries before they could become a viable power again since most of the Factor's industry was destroyed in the Great War.

Skinsuits: A suit worn by naval personnel during space battles. It is the evolution of the original space suits, these suits being far more form fitting and more resistant to damage. These suits increased the survival of naval personnel, whose ships were often opened up to vacuum. Originally designed only for humans, there are now treecat and Medusan models of skinsuits.

Spider Drive: A drive system originally utilized by the Mesan Alignment; spider-drive vessels are the pinnacle of stealth-classed ambush ships. The drive itself consists of several powerful tractor and pressor beams to pierce the barrier between n-space and hyperspace and thus pull the vessel forward. Unfortunately, this means that the trilaterally symmetrical spider-drive vessels do not have sidewalls or impeller wedges and thus must rely on their armor and stealth. Despite advancements in spider-drive technology, spider-drive ships have yet to reach speeds over five hundred gravities, making them one of the slowest vessels in any human navy.

TLN Prometheus: Despite its designation as a Terran League ship, the TLN Prometheus was constructed in the Manticore system as a joint project between the Terran League and the Grand Alliance. It houses the first impeller/dark energy hybrid engine system which finally allows full usage of an impeller drive's acceleration rate in conjunction with a mass effect field. This unique combination allows this survey ship to rise as far up as the Upsilon band in hyperspace, making it the fastest hyper-capable ship in existence, which is ten times faster than Streak drive ships confined to the Kappa band.

Treecats: Native to the planet Sphinx in the Manticoran system, Treecats are the smallest sentient race in the galaxy. The six-limbed felines are an arboreal species, having evolved in the jungles of Sphinx. However, Treecats have been known to be capable of bringing down a Krogan when either themselves or their person is threatened. Treecats are a telempathic race, and in order to further understand alien species have developed a way in which to psychically bond with other races, creating lifelong partnerships. Despite access to modern technology, Treecats instead prefer to have a symbiotic relationship with space faring races. Their oral history is rich and dates back thousands of years, and is, unfortunately, completely incapable of being written down.

-TED-

Check out my new poll, I know that it won't come to pass till much much later, but I figured I'd get this down since I'm wavering on the origin of a certain character.