TURIAN RECON PATROL

NEAR VAKARIAN'S BLUFF - PLANETARY NEBULA

BORDERING THE CASTELLUS SYSTEM

FEBRUARY 2188

"In cloud-ships the gods are wont to travel,

and wise cotters have legends that keep them from certain high peaks at night when it is cloudy,

for the gods are not lenient as of old."

THE TURIAN CRUISER MILLENNIOS, fresh out of drydock and newly christened, had only been on its shakedown cruise for less than a solar day when it encountered the Reaper Destroyer on its flight vector. This Destroyer was still active, and the crew eagerly endorsed interception and engagement. The Captain ordered it so, and it took little time for the Millennios to catch it. As they came within a few thousand kilometers of it, however, Tactical reported something exceedingly strange.

The Destroyer made no move to attack or retreat, from its movement it seemed to actually be in some measure of distress.

"It's broadcasting an odd signal, Captain," the Comm Tech Netian told Captain Invectus Solanus.

"What? Could there be more active Reapers out there? Contact High Command immediately and inform them we'll need…"

"Sir, no, sir – it doesn't match any known Reaper communication we've uncovered, it's just very… I'll put it on speaker, sir."

The Tech did so, and the bridge of the Millennios was suddenly filled with a sound that sent shivers down spines, set teeth on edge. It was a mournful sound, almost a dirge, the feared foghorn-like blast muted into an almost-melancholy moan. Had it issued from some great beast, Solanus would have been moved to pity, sought to end the creature's suffering. This merely hardened him. There would be no quarter for that thing, no matter how lost it sounded. Palaven still burned, millions of his dead brothers and sisters demanded vengeance.

"It sounds so… miserable," his Second – Maktikus - muttered from his elbow.

"Stand by all weapons – we'll put it out of that particular misery."

The Destroyer was targeted and in short order blown into small chunks.

Solanus nodded in satisfaction as the abomination came apart, but his Second didn't seem happy with the outcome.

"Ha! First blood for a fine new ship!"

"Sir, if I may, the Reaper didn't even fight back, didn't even attempt a minimum defence. It's as if it just committed …suicide. This whole engagement was unnervingly odd."

"It's one less Reaper monster, Second. I don't care how it dies as long as it does. That's all there is to it."

Solanus gave it no more consideration, ordered the ship to do deepscans of the area and then resume its patrol.

"Sir –" Comm Tech Netian. "Another signal, no… several. They're the same as the Reaper we just destroyed." Again he put it on speaker, again that unnerving moan, but layered now, multiple moans, all crying at once.

"Spirits, that's disturbing." Second Maktikus muttered. "Widescan of the immediate area – now!"

It took no time at all. A tactical map replaced the Galaxy map before them. Red blips slowly drifted through a representation of the system. There were dozens of them. Unknowingly, the Millennios had chased the Destroyer right into the middle of a small Reaper fleet.

"Stand by all shielding and weapons – rig buoys and distress beacons – alert High Command that we…!"

"Captain – look…! They're not doing anything. All are reading as powered and active, but they're all just …listless. It's as if they don't even see us."

"Withdraw to the system's edge and contact the nearest fleet division. We have a perfect opportunity to destroy a large number of these things."

"What should we say about the Reapers' behavior, sir?"

Solanus juddered his mandibles in amusement.

"That we have easy pickings, Lieutenant. The scientists can dissect them after we're done." A nod, and the signal was sent. "Prime us for heavy action and ready yourselves for victory!"

"Aye!"

CAPTAIN VENIUS ATRUROS of the turian dreadnought Heroes Amassing was a cautious and meticulous officer. He did not simply rush into a battle without proper foreknowledge. He knew the Captain of the Millennios was new and eager, straining at the lead to prove himself and his new ship. He couldn't blame him, he was young once, too. The transmission they'd received was unnerving to say the least, but not as unnerving as Solanus' boastful announcement that the Millennios was about to engage several dozen yet-active Reapers on its own. Only that had prompted the Amassing's dash across the system.

Two hours after receiving the transmission, the dreadnought came upon the Millennios' last known location ready and prepared for an intense fight…

…but found only the wreckage of a dozen Reapers, from Sovereign-class monsters to insect-like Destroyers.

Of the Millennios, there was no sign.

No ion trace, no weapon-fire residue from its new cannon, no engine emissions or debris from its possible destruction.

All that remained was a small turian beacon, initially missed in the eezo haze left by the gutted Reaper hulks.

Brought onboard, the beacon was unlocked and its message decoded.

It was a voice recording, turian, but like none no one on the ship had ever heard, a voice like the stab of an ice pick in the eye.

It said only two words:

"They come."

TWO DAYS LATER, a turian lifepod was discovered orbiting a new asari science station monitoring the Galaxy's edge and the Void beyond, just out from the Artemis Tau system. How the pod arrived unnoticed was never uncovered. It had simply... appeared. In it, quite dead, his skull pulverized in his flesh and his brain liquefied, was Captain Invectus Solanus, young veteran of the Menae Front. There were no logs. There was nothing in the pod to suggest any kind of violence. Solanus was sitting upright in his harness, his face composed.

The Millennios was never found.

CRESCENT NEBULA

ZELENE SYSTEM

PLANET NEPYMA

LATE FEBRUARY 2188

THE EMERALD DAWN was discovered by a passing salarian scout ship on the patrol for Reaper hulks, its empty bulk in orbit of the planet Nepyma.

Scans of the ships turned up unsettling data that could not be accounted for – the Dawn had been commissioned and built at the Jovian Dockyards in 2175, yet the age of the materials suggested the ship was older than that – much older – on the scale of almost a hundred years older. It was if, and this was the ridiculous part, the ship has somehow gone back in time. From crew and passengers of three hundred, only seven mummified corpses were found, four crew at their stations and three passengers in their cabins. Age analysis showed they had been dead for a very long time, nearly a century, which all personnel of the dispatched forensics teams agreed was also completely impossible.

Neither Shepard, Jack or Grunt were found, and they could not be accounted for – no personal effects had been left behind, but all ship stores had been left intact. Re-priming the engines and the ship's main computer yielded reactivation of systems, but the ship had no eezo core, and none could be found, nor residue that indicated on had ever existed. Where eezo stores should have been, they found tanks of deuterium, anti-matter packets in intricate magnetic containment, and a gravity-powered drive core the likes found only in fiction.

Their investigation concluded, the forensics teams left to study their evidence. Engineering teams remained to study the unknown but revolutionary technology that had somehow replaced the mass effect core. Highly detailed, extremely intricate and intensive scans were made. The data was dispatched on heavily armored remote drones to Alliance Command.

Upon attempting to "fire up" the engine, the last transmission said something about a 'cascade failure and a coolant breach'. The Dawn promptly detonated and tore half the atmosphere of Nepyma from the planet, burning a swathe of the surface five hundred kilometers in diameter.

For fear of 'disheartening' the populace, and to keep the inexplicable anomalies of the ship quiet until the collected data could be studied, it's loss was kept completely secret.