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Welcome to the Future: Chapter 4

There were no signs of hostile activity. At least, there were no signs of an armed struggle. No tell-tale charred marks from hypervelocity impacts, no bloodstains, no smashed equipment, and most obviously, no corpses. In fact, there was no sign of activity of any sort. Floodlights had been set up, but they were unlit. Portable nuclear-thermoelectric generators littered the site, cheery green lights indicating full functionality, but they all had been neatly disconnected from the equipment that they once powered. Those lights would probably stay green for centuries, left in these conditions.

And of course, there were the six Pioneer-class micro-habs, which were basically four-man tents pimped out to keep their occupants alive if not comfortable in environments ranging from the top of Olympus Mons to the Far Side of Luna. Plug in a tank of pressurised air and a decent power supply, and it gave you a survivable temperature and kept your atmosphere oxygenated. Shepard had used them herself, in similar enough conditions during her time with the Interplanetary Combatives Training program. They might not protect you from a thresher maw attack, but in extreme cold and hard vacuum they could give you a place to sleep, eat and live without wearing a 3-inch pressure suit.

As long as they were kept supplied with power, which these particular units weren't. Scanning the micro-habs with her Omni-tool, Shepard confirmed her suspicions. Each one had been without power long enough that their interiors were as cold and dead as the rest of the planet. Not that it would have taken particularly long. The metal floor of the structure was just as cold as what little atmosphere was inside it, and that would have sapped the heat from inside the habitats within minutes, no matter how thick the insulation was.

No one had spoken a word since entering the chamber; it was Garrus who finally broke the silence.

"I don't think this is going to be a search and rescue mission."

"More like salvage and recovery now," Kasumi replied. "I've found a few working datapads, and none of them have entries made more recently than 6 months ago. I don't think anyone's still alive here."

Shepard said nothing. She knew there was no way that anyone could still be alive inside the micro-habs, but that didn't mean they were empty. And if no one was inside, then it couldn't hurt to open one up and take a look. Overriding the safety mechanisms that kept the pressurized micro-habs sealed and shut would not be an easy task though. Once a micro-hab was pressurized, it was designed only open from the inside, and even then only after a long and slow depressurization routine. Shepard had learned how to open a micro-hab from the outside during her training, but that method involved the use of a small amount of high explosive, and would most likely cause serious damage to whatever evidence she might hope to find inside.

Making her decision, Shepard called Kasumi over to her position.

"Can you get these habitats opened safely? I don't want explosive decompression ruining whatever's inside."

"Shepard, if I didn't know any better I'd think you were trying to insult me. I've broken through more military-grade security systems than I can count, some cheap commercial safety protocols are child's play by comparison. Help me plug the generators back into the habitats and I'll have them open in no time."

Shepard gave a quick laugh before replying.

"You don't know the military very well, do you Kasumi? Commissioned officers don't do manual labor, we delegate it."

Pausing for a moment, she switched her suit radio from "Transmit to individual" to "Transmit to all".

"Miranda, Jacob; give Kasumi a hand with the habitat generators. Garrus, look around the site and try to find anything that might tell us what happened to Cerberus's research team. Mordin, see if you can recover any of their data."

Before anyone else could respond, Jacob radioed back in.

"Commander, I think I've found something big. You're gonna want to see this."

"What is it, Jacob? Can it wait until we've got these habitats opened?"

"Negative, commander. I think this is the 'Significant Discovery' the research team reported before we lost contact with them."

Shepard turned to Kasumi and shrugged, as if to say "What can you do?"

Making her way to Jacob's position on the other side of the base camp, Shepard radioed the team a second time.

"Jacob, I'm heading over to see what you've found. Miranda, help Kasumi get those habitats open. Garrus, Mordin, your last instructions still stand."

Five different voices came back with five slightly different ways of saying the exact same thing.

"Understood, Commander."

"Understood, Shepard."

"No problem, Shep."

"You got it, Shepard."

"Affirmative."

Shepard reached Jacob's location just in time to see him pull his head out of the top of an open crate. He had a datapad in one hand, and a heavy pistol in the other. Shepard didn't recognize the model.

"Alright Jacob, what have you found?"

Jacob shrugged before handing over the datapad.

"Here, read the last two entries in this journal. It'll probably give you a clearer explanation than I can."

Shepard clicked back to the relevant page and started reading.

Day 491

We don't have any way to confirm it, but Davidson and I suspect that the Anomaly might be a portal of some kind. The images surrounding it seem to correspond to neighboring star systems, but it's entirely possible that we're misinterpreting them. They're simplistic enough to be quite ambiguous, so we've taken pictures for further examination. The radiation in that chamber limits the time we can spend investigating there. Langford isn't letting us in there for more than twenty minutes at a time, which is ridiculous in my opinion. We should be able to stay in there for over an hour without putting ourselves at risk, especially with these environment suits that we have to wear.

He's also making us work in groups of 6, rather than the usual 3, which cuts down immensely on the ground that we can cover. When anyone tries to talk to him about it he just starts yelling. I think the stress is getting to him, but it's not like he has an excuse. I don't think any of us has had enough sleep for the past 9 weeks. The dreams still haven't gone away, and they still don't make any sense. Just flashing lights and geometric patterns, and you wake up feeling like you didn't get any rest at all. Garber's been saying something about ambient magnetic fields causing crossfire in the optic nerves, or something like that.

He's probably talking out of his ass though. The man's a chemist, not a biologist.

-Rachel Lee

Scrolling down the page, Shepard saw the aforementioned pictures. Apparently this research team had a penchant for serious understatement, as "simplistic" didn't really do justice in describing the symbols she was looking at. To her it just looked like a mess of rings and dots. Seeing nothing else of interest, she moved on to the final entry.

Day 494

I'm certain now that the Anomaly is some sort of transportation device, and I think Davidson has almost got Langford convinced too. We've found some out-of-place artifacts in adjacent chambers that can't be easily explained otherwise.

We've stored the artifacts in containers B-07 and D-39. They'll be crucial evidence if we have to convince the Illusive Man of the significance of this installation.

-Rachel Lee

Intrigued now, Shepard looked upwards to see Jacob watching her expectantly.

"Okay, Jacob. Let me take a wild guess and assume that you were looking for the 'Out-of-place artifacts' that were mentioned in the last entry?"

Jacob nodded.

"Yeah, and I think I found 'em."

He pointed at the crate that Shepard had seen him looking through. It was a cube with slightly rounded edges, with sides measuring slightly more than a meter in length. Shepard stepped over and peered into it, activating the lights on her helmet as she did so.

"It's just a bunch of... Guns?"

"Not ordinary guns Commander. These things are seriously old. Look at this."

Turning back to face Jacob, Shepard saw that he was holding the heavy pistol by the barrel, with the grip facing her. She took it from him carefully, noting that the pistol was unusually heavy. She turned the pistol on its side and scraped some frost off from the barrel. Holding it closer to the light from her helmet, she looked to see the make and model.

Engraved onto the side of the barrel were the words 'HOOD ARSENAL'.

Shepard frowned. She'd never heard of that manufacturer before. She flipped the pistol over in her hand and checked the other side of the barrel to see if there was anything else written there.

MAJESTIC .50

.50AE TACTICAL REVOLVER

MADE IN USA

What the hell? A revolver?

Jacob's voice snapped Shepard out of her puzzlement.

"Commander, I've looked at all of those weapons, and they all seem to be human-made. Probably 21st century technology. A lot of metal and synthetic parts, and not a trace of eezo in any of them. My guess is, some poor bastard stumbled into a portal in one of the Ceph ruins on Earth over a century back and wound up here. Probably a soldier, judging by all the weapons they brought with them. And unless they were wearing some kind of heavy-duty environmental suit, they would have frozen to death in seconds."

Shepard didn't answer immediately. Jacob's suggestion was plausible, but the possible implications of an undiscovered teleportation device that linked to Earth were staggering. Unable to suggest an alternative explanation, she shrugged.

"We should try and find more evidence before jumping to any conclusions. Let's find that second crate, for a start."

Jacob shook his head.

"No need, Commander. The researchers were well organised, they put the two containers right next to each other."

He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb, tilting his head back for emphasis.

"Alright then, let's crack it open and see what's inside."

The second crate was bigger than the first, measuring roughly a meter tall and a meter wide, and two meters long. The lid had been secured with four locks along the rim, but Shepard and Jacob popped them open easily with gentle biotic pulls. Lifting the lid away, Shepard glanced down into the crate and flinched, almost dropping the lid.

Lying face down in the crate was a skinned human corpse.

But as she set the lid down and took a second, closer look, Shepard realized she had been mistaken. Though it had an uncanny resemblance to skinless muscle, a sight that she was far too familiar with, the material she was looking at was obviously synthetic. The hexagonal patterning and protrusions of silvery metal told her that much. What she was seeing was a man, because the figure was obviously male, inside of a strange vacuum suit. Perhaps it was one of the Cerberus researchers? The hexagonal pattern was certainly similar to the bodysuits that Jacob and Miranda usually wore. And then Jacob leaned over the other side of the crate, took one look at the body and swore.

"Holy shit!"

Shepard looked up, and saw the shock in his eyes. Confused and concerned, she asked:

"What is it?"

Jacob took a while to respond.

"That- that's... I think that's a Nanosuit!"

Author's notes:

Right, I think that's all I can do for now. Due to a combination of work and home related issues, I haven't had much time to work on the story, and a lot of what I have done i've had to type on my iPhone, which has been a pretty frustrating experience. Autocorrect makes absolutely no sense some times. I really hope my next update is more timely, as the next chapter should be much more exciting than these last few have been. Spoilers: Guns will be fired, and we'll get to see what biotics can do in a Zero Gravity environment. As promised, Alcatraz is now on the scene, but he won't be up and running for another chapter or so. A century-long ice nap isn't something a guy can just shrug off in an instant, even if he is in a nanosuit. Please leave a review!