A/N; so here we are, chapter six, my longest chapter to date, enjoy.
Also i own nothing, the franchises belong to their respectful owners.
Flagship Indomitable, CIC, Other side of Relay 314, 2154 Citadel Standard
Septimus Oraka watched as the holographic representations of his fleet come out from the relay and as a detailed scan of the surrounding space, this relay had apparently been knocked out of its home system for one reason or another, his bet was on a Super Nova. There were only a few systems within FTL range of the relay; he would send a couple of scouting flotilla's to scout them out and…
"Sir! I'm picking up a single contact at the edge of our sensor range, it's an 89% profile match to the Cruiser the Asari expedition found," one of his Lieutenants reported, Septimus thought for a second,
'Could this be the same race? No, it's only an 89% match on the profile, but if it is they might have changed the design over the years, the report did mention that the ships found was around eighty years old,' he was struggling for what he should do, if it was a Batarian ship he would blow it out of existence but if it was belonging to the race that had built the ship Captain Asri and her crew had found he should try and contact them, he might not be able to talk to them but he can at least appear to be non-threatening.
"Lieutenant, what can you tell me about that ship?" Septimus asked, if it proved to be hostile than he wanted to know as much as he could about the ship,
"Not a lot from this range sir but it's a heavy Cruiser profile, hull spectrograph is inconclusive and power readings… they're through the roof! Its producing more power a second than every ship in the fleet," the same Lieutenant reported, "I can't get anything conclusive on its weapon systems, but I'm not picking up any amounts of Eezo from it at all, there are no mass effect fields or anything,"
"Hmm… interesting, that would explain the high power output Lieutenant; they don't have mass effect cores so they had to invent their own form of FTL, one that requires a lot of power. It can't be Batarian, look at the ship design, they prefer thin and tall ships not large bulky and heavily armed and armoured ships. Do you know what that means Lieutenant?" Septimus asked, the Lieutenant shook his head,
"Contact that ship, I want to try and let them know were on the same side here," Septimus ordered, nearly every crewman in the CIC had stopped working to see what was going to happen, they were tense and Septimus was shaking slightly, if he mucked up than it would all go downhill from there.
Soon enough though the Comm screen came to life and the image of the ship's Captain came on screen, it was similar enough to an Asari, it was dressed in some sort of grey garb that had decorated shoulders and two badges of some sort on its chest, one was of a planet with some sort of plant underneath it and going up and around but ending before it formed a full circle it had three little stars underneath it all. The other badge was of a large bird of prey with its wing spread out fully above its head, a shield was over its bottom half with four letters of the unknown alien language, it too was above a planet with writing replacing the plant and with four stars, two one each side of the planet. The alien itself was pale with short brown fur atop its head although it looked partially black, it had a scar running down the side of its face from its fur line to just by its nose, it was a veteran that much was for sure, the being raised an eyebrow at him as if it was expecting him to say something, so he did.
"I am General Septimus Oraka of the Turian Hierarchy, this fleet is here to…" he stopped when the alien raised its hand and looked off screen and said something he couldn't understand, a look of anger passed briefly across its face before it simply smacked its palm into its face, it shouted a single word before looking back at him in an apologetic way, it shrugged its shoulders when a Lieutenant on the Coms said,
"Sir, it seems to be sending a language package, but it's going to take some time to sort through it all and tie it into the translation systems," Septimus nodded,
"Get to it than, the sooner the better,"
Oraka looked back at the alien who was waiting patiently and uploaded a small video file showing the alien where to dock with his ship, it seemed to look a bit indecisive at first it pointed to itself and then pointed to Septimus as if asking 'you want me to come to you?' Septimus nodded and suddenly hoped that a nod meant yes to these aliens and not something offensive,
The alien nodded back but sent its own file to the Indomitable, it showed more ships coming in around the alien vessel and a small count down appeared, he might not have known what symbol represented which number but it was going down quickly, it would be done in roughly an hour if he were to guess. He understood that the alien was letting him know more of his people would be arriving when the timer ran out; it was a gesture that could have been taken the wrong way by a hotter headed commander.
UNSC Sevenfold, Main Armoury, August 20th 2587
"Hey, how come we got a newbie on our team, huh? I mean we worked fine before but lady green over there is just going to cramp our style I mean…" Sargent Becky Coulson started moaning again before being interrupted by David, she was leaning back against a locker with one of her feet on the bench runnig through the middle of the room, fastining te boot tight,
"Stow it Beck, 'Lady Green' over there has more combat experience than the rest of us, for cryin' out loud she's a freaking Forerunner so she fought the flood, that's more than you've had to deal with Beck," David scolded the Sargent, she may have been good at her job but she was an ODST and thought that she was better than everyone else, David was busy fastening his chest plate to his chest,
"Oh come on Becks, you just jealous that you aint the only girl on the team now, admit it," said Eugene Heckle, a large black man that looked more like he should be playing Grav Ball rather than fighting Insurrectionists and now aliens, when Eugene had first joined the team David had taken one look at him and called him 'Train', everyone was confused by the name but it stuck,
"Train, be nice, Becks is on her time of the month so you might wanna be careful otherwise she'll add your balls to her collection," joked Marcus 'Felix' Knight, a tanned man with a black goatee and a flop of black hair, like Eugene David had given him the nickname the second Marcus joined the team,
"Oh up yours Felix," Becky retorted weakly, these people made up Echo team,
The team was putting on their armour ready for their upcoming mission, one they had not expected, they were to act as Commander Walters guard detail as they went to the alien ship, the Commander had already gotten ready, and was waiting for them in the corner with the latest addition to their team, the Forerunner Warrior-Servant known as Glory, she didn't bother to tell them the rest of her name.
David was the first one ready out of the team and headed over to join the Commander and Glory, he had an MA5K strapped to him with a M6H in his holster, the Commander also kept an M6H with him while Glory had some wicked looking Forerunner gun that was designed to fight wars against other beings rather than the flood.
"Do you meatheads all ways take this long to get ready or just when you have a date?" the Commander joked, David laughed at the jibe and shook his head,
"Ah, just wanna keep our dates waiting, plus we gotta make ourselves look pretty, I mean we've got to make up for your lack of looks sir," David replied, Walters raised an eyebrow,
"So sir, Lorelie tells me that you face-palmed while talking to the alien leader, what was that about?" David inquired, it had been funny when they had heard about it but he wanted to know why, Philip's expression changed, he looked pissed off more than anything now,
"My XO is useless, when Lorelie came back online I had asked her to send them the language packet but she was still sorting herself out, I told Lieutenant Commander Skye to send it to them but he was rather adamant about having Lieutenant Vickers do it, his argument was 'I never worked the Comm station before, I don't know how,' as soon as we link up with the rest of the fleet I am having him transferred, he is nothing but trouble," Walters told him, "I face palmed cause that was the most pathetic excuse I have ever heard, ever."
David nodded in understanding, if his 2IC started doing that in a potentially hostile environment he would have shot him, pure and simple. Glory seemed to understand as she stood there, to David Forerunners were odd creatures, the males tended to be rather ugly in his opinion, they were tough as fuck to try and kill but they were ugly, the females, of any caste, seemed to be highly attractive, Glory was no exception, even if she didn't have the same facial features as his own race, like the nose. Her dark red hair was short and tied back, away from her face; emerald eyes watched his every movement,
"So Glory, looking forward to seeing a new race?" David asked as casually as possible, she didn't even hesitate before replying,
"No, they're Turians, from what I remember they were a highly militaristic race that will probably try and convince you that they are more superior then your race," her voice was rugged and harsh with a slight feminine smoothness to it,
"Okay… this'll be fun…not," David replied, Walters looked around awkwardly; after all it was his idea to make contact with them,
"There is nothing to be ashamed of Commander; you are fulfilling your role as the caretakers of the galaxy by making contact with them, if something goes wrong than we will simply show them that we are superior, not them." Glory reassured the Commander,
"Wait, how come you know who they are? You haven't even seen them yet," David asked,
"The Commander showed me what they looked like, the Turians were trouble makers' back when Forerunners ruled the galaxy, they might not have had the ability to travel through the stars but when life workers tried to index them before the firing of the Halo array they fought against us every step, we had to forcibly index them, their ancestors believed that we were 'evil spirits' to be conquered, it was pathetic really, swords and arrows versus hardlight weapons and energy shielding, you can guess the outcome of the fights we had," Glory replied, it set David's nerves on edge, would having her tag along cause a fight? He doubted it as it had been a hundred thousand years since then.
It wasn't too much longer before the rest of the team was ready and joined the Commander, David and Glory; they made their way towards the lone Pelican bay where one of the seven Pelicans that the Sevenfold carried was ready and waiting, the blue engines shimmered and the armour plating glistened, they got into the back of the Pelican and strapped themselves down,
"Yo Commander, how come we aint waiting for the Daedalus to arrive before going to see these aliens, I mean it's not like we can talk to them or anything," Train asked, Philip simply smiled,
"I had Lorelie work out a basic text translation system," he pulled out a data pad from his pocket, "I type what I want to say into this and hand it over, he, or she, reads it and writes a reply, it simple enough, although the only problem was trying to organise their alphabet into the pad," the Commander replied, "Plus the Daedalus will arrive in half an hour, I want to at least make sure their fleet Commander knows so he doesn't start shooting when our reinforcements arrive."
The team seemed to agree with him as no one said a word as the Pelican lifted off and into space, it flew with the speed and agility that Turians could only ever dream of, the trip from the Sevenfold to the alien flag ship would be around ten minutes, as they approached the alien fleet two Turian fighters took up an escorting position next to the Pelican, guiding them to the large flagship, Philip had to admit it was an impressive sight, it was as large as a Marathon MK-II Cruiser, the sweeping wings made the entire vessel look like a bird of prey to him.
Inside the hanger of the flagship was relatively cramped, it wasn't designed for a large amount of fighters or drop ships, the Pelican turned around presenting the troop bay to the aliens, when the ramp lowered Philip was surprised to see an honour guard was waiting for him and Echo, he swallowed once before stepping out of the Pelican and instantly the honour guard snapped to attention, a sign of a well-trained and organised military, maybe Glory was right and this was not a good idea.
"I'll go first, Echo follow up, Glory cover our rear," Philip ordered, the members of Echo nodded and Philip slowly walked down the ramp and into the alien hanger, the guards stood even straighter, as Philip moved forward with Echo in tow he noticed that there were more than one alien species, one was a tall, thin amphibious race with large black eyes and two horn like protrusions sticking out from the top of its head, the other was a race of blue skinned aliens, crests topped their heads above remarkably familiar facial features. Philip slowed slightly as he realised this, Echo also slowed down as they too realised that there was more than one race.
"Glory…"Philip whispered, she moved up to stand next to him she took in a quick look at the aliens, he figured that she was contacting what was left of the Domain, finding out what the Forerunners knew about the races,
"The blue ones are called Asari, they're mono-gendered, they reproduce through connecting their nervous systems with another being and this allows them to use its genetic information to manipulate the DNA in its offspring. The tall amphibious race is called… Salarians, they were never expected to evolve into a sentient life form, they were nothing more than fancy lizards." Glory told him, this would certainly be interesting.
Philip started walking towards the three aliens at the end of the group; the 'Asari' member looked slightly concerned, he couldn't read the expressions on the 'Turian' or 'Salarian' members of the delegation, if it could be called that. When he reached them Philip was nervous, in fact he was starting to sweat, Glory stood next to him with Echo stood behind him, they were on guard but kept their weapons stowed. Philip pulled out his data pad and typed in his name, rank and service number and then handed it over to the Turian.
Hanger Bay 2, Flagship Indomitable, Connecting Relay to 314, 2154 Citadel Standard
Septimus Oraka looked at the alien delegate, the leader was the same one from the view screen in the CIC, the other that went from standing behind the escorts to standing next to the leader was slightly taller and had a more feminine shape covered in advanced armour, he couldn't see her face but guessed it was similar to the leaders face. The other figures were dressed in a dark charcoal black armour with blue visors, they all had different, various attachments to their armour.
The leader of the group took out a data pad of some sort and typed into it and handed it over to Oraka, Septimus was surprised by what he saw, in perfect Turian was;
COMMANDER PHILIP MICHAEL WALTERS UNSC service number-00932-2093-PW
Septimus was only surprised for a second but then he figured that this was the result of the language packet he sent back to the Commanders ship merely as a courtesy, the sooner they could talk the better, his fleet had a mission to do and while this was a very important and delicate procedure he needed it to hurry along. This was why he had the Asari Captain Afera Kelia with him, he would have her meld with the Commander and use her to communicate, it was crude but effective, he realised that in the pad a keyboard of sorts had popped up, it was using Turian letters but it wasn't quite right but he still figured out how to type the reply;
I AM GENERAL SEPTIMUS ORAKA OF THE TURIAN HEIRARCHY, TO MAKE COMMUNICATIONS EASIER I HAVE ASKED CAPTAIN AFERA KELIA OF THE ASARI REPUBLICS TO INNITATE A MIND MEL WITH YOU, THIS WILL ALLOW HER TO SPEAK YOUR LANGUAGE AND TRANSLATE IT FOR US WHILE WE WORK ON UPDATEING OUR TRANSLATORS WITH YOUR LANGUAGE.
Septimus handed the pad back to the Commander, who read it and seemed a bit indecisive, when the person next to him said something before he replied with only three different words, one word was repeated or at least it sounded like it was repeated, he really regretted not learning how to communicate with aliens, he should have taken the course when it was offered.
The Commander handed the pad back for the General to read, it simply said;
OKAY THEN
Septimus motioned for Afera to move forward and initiate the meld, she offered a small bow to the alien Commander which he returned, she then stood forward, put her hand on his temple and started the meld.
Philip could feel the 'Asari' shift through his mind, going through all the memories associated with English and the meaning behind each word, it was like relearning everything in one sudden push of information. When she finally receded from his mind he let out a small gasp,
"I had told you it would hurt," Glory said from his side as she held him up, his knees refused to fully support his weight at that moment,
"Yeah well it was that or communicate by writing everything down; it was easier this way,"
"The melding is usually very tiring, it takes many years of practise to master and I am no master," came a new voice, it was unsure and uneven, like a child still learning to speak even though they knew what they were saying, Philip figured that it was the Asari and as he looked up at the voice sure enough there was the blue skinned alien, stood in front of him, she too looked rather tiered from the joining,
"Your language is interesting, all the different words and meanings, some of which we have never heard of," Afera stated, Philip laughed weakly,
"Yeah, English is a particularly odd language, take the word supercalifragilisticexpialid ocious for example, it's an abomination of a word but was used in a song, a very funny song might I add, so is hippopotomonstrosesquipedali ophobia, that word means a fear of long words, ironic isn't it?" Philip semi-joked, Afera looked slightly mortified at the long words, Philip let out a small laugh,
"Don't worry, most people simply use the term 'scared of long words'," he reassured her, she looked slightly less stressed after that, Philip then once again stood at his full height, an impressive six foot and three inches and offered his hand to the Asari,
"Commander Philip Walters of the UNSC Sevenfold, a pleasure to make your acquaintance Captain," he said to Afera who looked mildly shocked at the manners of the alien Commander,
"It is indeed a pleasure to make your acquaintance Commander; it is not every day that a new race is discovered," Afera replied, the Commanders body guards seemed to share a look with one another as did the Commander and the person by his side,
"Don't even say it Glory," Philip said before Glory could even utter a word, "What do you mean by a 'new race'? Is it like a race ou haven't encountered before or a race that is new to the whole idea of space travel because we are certainly not the latter," Philip continued,
"A little bit of both perhaps, but if you don't mind my asking, how long has your race been traveling the stars? We now it is for a little under a century at the least but…" Afera trailed off, Philip and the members of Echo frowned,
"How do you know that?" Philip asked slowly, full of suspicion, the Asari looked back at Septimus and spoke in her natural tongue which was obviously understood by the 'Salarian' and Turian, they both nodded before Afera turned back to face Walters and Glory,
"Perhaps we should take this conversation elsewhere," Afera offered, Walters was a bit reluctant to let it go but agreed. They were soon escorted to a room deep within the bowls of the Dreadnought; inside the room was a single table with several chairs next to it along with what appeared to be holo-projectors, it was a simple meeting room. Echo team stood against one of the walls behind the seat offered to Philip and to his surprise, Glory, she was technically part of Echo and was about to join them when he told her to sit, she was the Forerunner member of the delegation whether or not she liked it, she passed her weapon off to David before sitting down.
"So, how do you know about us?" Philip asked the second everyone had settled in,
"An Asari deep space expedition came across a wreck in space, a boarding party was sent aboard and after some time they found several bodies and some computer files we are still trying our best to translate what we found but it is all very complicated…" Afera said, she looked slightly ashamed especially when confronted with four silver/blue visors that just screamed death at her and the look from the Walters,
"Do you have the information? The data your team gathered?" Philip asked, Afera nodded in confirmation, "Show me," Philip didn't so much as ask as he did demand, Afera spoke quietly with the other members of the alien delegation before handing over a small orange screened data pad, on it were several pictures of the wreck along with the data file collected, looking through them he quickly named off what they were;
"A partially completed Shaw multi-variant calculus slip-space navigational input parameter, a letter and a book; Lord of the flies actually, a good book," he then studied the stills of the wreck itself, in one of the stills in big bulky chalk white letters was; UNSC Lowrentz, he tried to remember back through all of the ship names he knew but came to no obvious answer, he contacted Lorelie back aboard the Sevenfold to run the name through the UNSC database, the answer was quick enough,
"The UNSC Lowrentz was a Destroyer during the second battle of Harvest; she was lost with all hands just before Cole managed to pull the victory out of the hat,"
"Thanks Lorelie," Philip replied, he explained about the Lowrentz and the battle of Harvest which in turn led to the Human-Covenant war, he was vague and brushed aside questions, the talk of the war reminded him to one of the reasons he was actually here,
"So, why exactly is a fleet of two hundred warships entering our space exactly?" he asked, Afera answered by explaining about the 'Skyllian Purge' after Edan Had'dah had started his quest to put Batarians at the forefront of galactic politics, making them the most powerful species in the know galaxy, however when Edan's 'crusaders' started bombing planets from orbit with Dreadnought class weapons and had started dropping asteroids on others, and on the worlds his forces did invade conventionally the atrocities committed were… indescribable, the Turians replied to this with the full might of their war machine which resulted in most Batarians either; dying, escaping to the Terminus systems or escaping with Edan into the unknown. This was the reason for the Council fleet, to make sure he never committed such atrocities again, she decided to leave out the slaves that had been found along with weapons, if the Commanders race ever had the chance to strike back they would have done by now, but he did mention that they were in a war of their own around the same time and thought that many of their colonies had been lost to this 'Covenant'.
"Perhaps you could tell us as to why you are here at this time Commander," Afera probed slightly for information,
"Okay but first I want to see a ship profile of these Batarians," Philip requested, Afera nodded and showed him, his look darkened at the memories it brought up, the blood red emergency light of the bridge, the bodies of the crew floating in the lack of gravity along with broken bits of the plastic display screens that had been smashed, hammering down on the MAC fire control and then the Archer missile stunt…
"Are you okay Commander?" Afera asked, bringing him back out of the memories, he looked up to see everyone looking at him with some concern on their alien faces, even Glory was looking at him through the golden visor of her helmet, he realised that his left hand had started to trace the scar on his face, he quickly regained his composure and put on a blank face,
"Yes, I'm fine," he replied quickly, too quickly, Afera had started to say something but Philip raised a hand, "I'm afraid we're going to have to cut the meeting short, I have to contact my superior officer and let him know of this recent… development, I beg of you not to leave this area of space for the time being, thing will be getting interesting soon, plus I'll have to be back for when the Daedalus arrives," Philip told them as he stood up, Echo snapped to attention as he did so and Glory too stood up, he may have lied about needing to back before the Daedalus arrives but they didn't need to know. They didn't need to know a lot of things and he was going to have to speak to Admiral Lasky before he did anything else, especially with the most recent discovery.
He quickly made his way to the hanger bay were the Pelican was still waiting, Echo and Glory followed closely behind, as soon as the last member of Echo had stepped on the ramp in fact he had ordered them to take off and head back to the Sevenfold, General Oraka, Captain Kelia and Captain Schells entered the hanger just as the Pelican lifted off, Septimus turned to Afera,
"What was that all about?" he asked with a slight growl in his voice, if Afera had somehow managed to piss off this race she would be the first Asari to fail at first contact,
"I-I don't know exactly, but he said he needed to contact his superior officer to find out what he should do next, he seemed rather distraught at the sight of a Batarian vessel,"
"Yes I figured that out, the question is why he was so distraught?" Septimus growled out,
"Once again I don't know, but he did request that we do not leave this area of space for the time being," Afera replied,
"Fine, report back to your ships and tell the vessels under your command not to leave formation until further notice, I don't know how long it'll…" he was cut off by a loud alarm ringing throughout the ship, he quickly called up to the CIC via his Omni-tool,
"What's going on?" General Desolas answered him from the other side,
"Multiple Spacial ruptures near the alien ship, there's at least a hundred of them, they appeared just as the countdown on that package the alien Commander sent to you ran out, it might be their reinforcements," Desolas told him,
"Understood, if it is them do not, I repeat DO NOT fire at them, I'm on my way up now." Septimus replied as he started on his way back to the CIC of the Indomitable.
Afera was about to call for a shuttle to pick her up ASAP when Schells nudged her side, she looked at him to see he was looking at his Omni-tool, it was from one of the camera's on one of the ships, probably a Salarian ship, on the screen it showed the space around the Sevenfold where a hundred spirals of green/blue light just appeared before spitting out a ship each, the last and biggest rupture let out a massive vessel that was huge when compared to the Sevenfold, in fact she guessed it was around Four kilometres long, nearly three times the size of the Destiny Ascension, on its side in large white letters in a language only she could read at the time was one word; Daedalus.
She was begging to think that this race had been in space a lot longer and was a lot more advanced than she had originally given them credit for.
The Pelican was heading towards the hanger bay at full speed as the Daedalus was due to arrive at any moment, Philip tried to contact Lorelie but was never answered, he event tried to contact the bridge but was once again met with no answer,
"Pilot, you sure the Com is working?" Philip asked, the pilot didn't even bother to look at him as she answered,
"The Comm is green, whatevers wrong must be on their end, at least we caught it before the mission huh Commander?" Philip was inclined to agree but his nerves were on edge, in fact he had the same feeling now as he did just before the Gorgon incident, it wasn't a good feeling,
Just as the Pelican was coming into the hanger one of the AAA Helix guns near the enterance spun up and fired a burst straight at the Pelican, the rounds missed but exploded nearby, the point of triple A was to either hit the target or the shrapnel from the flack rounds would take it out and thats what happened this particular time, fortinutly for the people inside the Pelican, the flack knocked out the rear engines causing lurch forward, knocking Philip who hadn't been strapped down, on to the floor. The Pilot managed to get the crippled bird into the hanger and not into the armor, that would have ended less than desirably.
Echo team was knocked out by the impact along with the Commander, the pilot was still concious, if barely, she watched as the enterance to the hanger opened to reveal three figures in basic combat fatigues, they definatly weren't UNSC standard.
A/N; Soooo... the ending huh? i didn't really think it would develop that way but... here we go, now before you ask questions... think, and i mean really think. the answers are there mostly so you just have to think.
Now i am a little bit unsure on this chapter especially the 'meeting' part of it so let me know what you think. also my laptop is acting up at the moment so updates will be... awkward, i'll try and do them as quick as possible but i cant if my laptop decides its not going to charge sooo yeah.
REVIEW! :)