Smoke on the Water
by P.H. Wise
A Mass Effect/XCOM Crossover Fanfic
Chapter 02: X-COM
Disclaimer: I own neither Mass Effect (EA) nor XCOM (God only knows).
Miranda produced a tiny device about the size of an old American quarter and activated it. It emitted a sound that quickly rose above the human range of hearing - or even the expanded human range, now that gene-mods were readily available to the public. She took a few moments to scan the room. "You'll have to forgive me, Shepard," she said. "We've made this hospital as secure as we could in what time we've had, but I'd rather not take any chances. Would you mind securing the room against telepathic eavesdroppers?"
Shepard nodded. "Sure," she said, and, with a moment's concentration and after a quick glimpse at both Captain Anderson and Miranda's minds to make sure nobody was already riding sidecar, she sent out a pulse of telepathic white noise. She allowed her mind to compartmentalize the activity, setting part of it to maintain the pulse while the rest of her directed its attention at Miranda and what she had to say. "We're good," she said.
Miranda nodded. "Very well. The abductions began about a year ago. It started small. A few minor raids on isolated settlements in the Traverse. At first we thought it was part of the Batarian remnant that we missed in the war. You remember how they worked before Elysium: a raid here and there, never hitting any system with established defenses, always the tiny independent colonies, testing our reaction time, always trying for settlements that weren't cost-effective to defend, operating entire fleets of bloody privateers."
"I take it it's not a Batarian remnant?" Jane asked. It was unlikely. She'd been a raw Lieutenant during the Batarian War, fresh out of officer training school. Hell, she'd been on Elysium when the Batarians had hit it. Elysium had been in the middle of a major upgrade to its defense systems to account for the capabilities of alien FTL technology. Every colony had been getting such an upgrade, but Elysium had been one of the last on the list. In retrospect, it probably should have been one of the first. A few slaver ships had been taken down by defense satellites, a few more by AA fire, but most got through. One of the slaver ships had been damaged and was forced to make an emergency landing landed on a high security research facility where a team of scientists had been… well, she still didn't know all the details, but they'd had live Chryssalids on site, and the Batarians blew right through the failsafes intended to destroy all live samples in the event of a breach. … and the backup failsafes intended to permanently seal off the facility. And the secondary backup failsafes intended to flood the facility with napalm. Things had gotten very bad on Elysium after that. The Alliance had won the day, and she'd played a major part in that, but it wasn't a good memory; the Batarians had their own name for Elysium, now: it translated roughly to, 'the skittering death.'
Miranda shook her head. "A Batarian remnant would be easy. We could sort that out in an afternoon. This is something else." She activated her omni-tool and brought up an image. A holographic image at once familiar and troubling sprang up in the air above her wrist: a ship that was not a ship. A grey, empty void where a ship should be.
Jane focused; she brought all of her concentration to bear, and she thought she could just make out a smooth, grey, sweeping hull and a light that was vaguely suggestive of… even as she looked, the image shimmered like a migraine-aura. It was gone. Her head hurt. All that remained was the empty grey.
Captain Anderson's eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.
Miranda scowled, "Two months ago, they stepped up their efforts. Instead of abducting people from outlying, isolated settlements, they started taking entire colonies. It's still small independent worlds outside of the Alliance's sphere of influence. Frontier worlds. Real hard-scrabble types. The ships come, and signals stop, and then everyone is just gone. They haven't come near any of the core worlds yet, and they haven't hit anywhere with defenses to speak of, but humanity's lost three frontier colonies in two months, and that's three too many. For obvious reasons, we're calling these ships 'Greys.' We don't know who's behind them, but we mean to find out."
Shepard looked to Anderson, and Anderson nodded. "All of that tracks with what we've been hearing in the fleet," he said. "People disappearing. Frontier worlds going dark. Ghost ships. There's been a lot of rumors flying around since the Normandy went down."
'And we're sure XCOM is real, sir?' Shepard asked telepathically. 'This isn't some new incarnation of EXALT? And assuming it does exist, Miranda Lawson really is with X-COM?'
'I didn't know about them before I was briefed on the matter by Admiral Hackett,' Anderson thought, 'But they're very real, Shepard. Ms. Lawson is on the level.'
Shepard glanced at Miranda. The woman had reasonable mental discipline, and didn't let much leak through to where a telepath could get at it without an active scan.
"So," Miranda said. "You in?"
"What do you need me to do, exactly?" Shepard asked.
"We need you to lead a mission to investigate, disrupt, and destroy the grey ships and whoever is behind them," Miranda replied.
On the surface that sounded reasonable, but when she gave it some thought, some oddities became apparent. "Why me? You've got operatives of your own."
"True," Miranda replied. "And yours won't be the only ship we're sending to abduction sites. It's a big galaxy, and one ship can't be in two places at once. But you underestimate your usefulness. You're a capable officer. You made it through N7 training. You've got command experience in both ship-to-ship engagements and ground battles. But beyond that, none of our operatives are living symbols of humanity's potential. None of our operatives personally led the mission that avenged Eden Prime, took down the Turian responsible, and was instrumental in thwarting a Geth invasion of the Citadel." Miranda smirked. "Arranging for the Alliance 5th fleet to ride to the rescue was a particularly inspired touch."
"There are over thirteen million civilians on the the Citadel at any given time," Shepard replied. "I couldn't let them die when I had the means to prevent it. Not to mention, if Saren had succeeded, we would be hip deep in Reapers right now, assuming we weren't dead already."
"Whatever your reasons," Miranda said, "We aren't going to argue with the results. They owe us, and they know it."
"And I made their Spectres look like fools," Shepard said.
"And you made their Spectres look like fools," Miranda agreed cheerfully. "But the point is, you're a hero, Shepard. Not just to humanity, but to the Citadel races as well. We can use that."
"I remember that part." Shepard said, and snorted. "Hero of the Citadel. Rear Admiral Mikhailovich was lobbying to have me dishonorably discharged for that. He called the Fifth Fleet's intervention, 'A shameful misuse of human lives and resources.'"
"Mikhailovich is just one hard-line human supremacist," Anderson said dismissively.
"We've got a lot of those, sir," Shepard said.
"Yes," Anderson said, "But the majority of the admiralty knows better."
Shepard raised an eyebrow. "Just how close did I come to disciplinary action, sir?"
"Close," Anderson conceded.
Miranda coughed, getting their attention. "What's it going to be, Commander?"
Jane thought about it, and Miranda let her. After about ten seconds had passed, Jane nodded. "I will not be a figurehead," she said. "If you are putting me in charge of this mission, then I expect to actually be in charge of this mission."
"That won't be a problem," Miranda said.
"I had a good team and a good crew. I want as many of them back as I can get."
Miranda looked at Anderson, and Anderson nodded. "Very well," Miranda replied, "Provided they can meet our training standards, pass the requisite background and security checks, and agree to be transferred to your command. Anything else, Commander?"
Jane shook her head. "No," she said. "I'm in."
"Good," Miranda said. "You'll have a week to get reacclimated to being alive. During that time, the public will be informed of your return. Then you're to report to Cydonia where you will be evaluated for service in the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit."
Jane raised an eyebrow. "Evaluated?"
"XCOM accepts only the best, Commander," Miranda said. Everyone goes through this when they join the program, but I'm confident you will do well. Assuming everything goes according to plan, your new ship will be fully provisioned and ready for you by the time you finish." At Shepard's questioning look, Miranda smiled. "You spent almost a year commanding the most advanced ship in the galaxy. A prototype stealth ship with, ton for ton, better shields, weapons, and armor than anything else in the Alliance Navy. Did you ever wonder why you never saw the production model?"
Shepard blinked. "Are you serious?"
"Perfectly serious," Miranda replied. Her comm beeped, and she glanced at her omni-tool. "If that's all, I'll be off. Good luck, Shepard."
After Miranda had left, Jane turned to Captain Anderson. "What do you think?" she asked.
Anderson shook his head bemusedly. "I think you had better sneak out before the reporters hear you're alive. Hero of the citadel back from the dead is a hell of a story."
Ugh. Was it too much to hope that Khalisah al-Jilani wouldn't be one of the reporters assigned to the story? 'Probably,' she decided upon reflection. "Right," Jane said. "I should go." She turned.
"Shepard?"
She paused, looking back over her shoulder at Captain Anderson. "Sir?"
"Good luck."
Jane smiled mostly with her eyes. "Thank you, sir."
Turned out, coming back from the dead was a big deal. Jane Shepard's return was the lead story on the Alliance News Network for the entire week after her release from the hospital, and given that the Alliance had only confirmed that she was alive and not the circumstances surrounding that fact, speculation was rampant. Some suggested that she'd been on a deep cover mission somewhere. One pundit suggested that perhaps she had been injured or otherwise incapacitated, though there were few injuries these days that required even a month of hospitalization, much less two years. Others were less charitable, and conspiracy theories abounded. She let them. She had bigger things to worry about, the biggest of which was the fact that she'd been dead.
Jane had never been a particularly religious person. She'd entertained some vague notion of a hereafter, an afterlife, something, but never anything concrete, but when she'd been dead… there was nothing. She could remember floating in space after the battle with the Grey Ship, her armor leaking air. It had felt like… like going to sleep, maybe. She remembered being sleepy. The adrenaline of battle fading. She remembered thinking, 'I am going to die.' But it was all right. Her crew had gotten out alive. Liara was alive. She remembered making telepathic contact with Liara, whispering an "I love you" before she couldn't sustain the connection any longer. Then…
Pain
Voices
Silence
She'd been… somewhere. There was a purple orb? The earth seen from orbit? A flicker of she wasn't sure what. When she'd woken up on that table, it hadn't felt like resurrection. Not that she had any idea what resurrection should feel like, but it had felt like... waking up. Certainly she didn't remember having been in any kind of Heaven or Hell. Then again, would she remember something like that? All her memories were stored in her brain, after all, and that brain had been with her body. If there was such a thing as a soul, Jane didn't know. It felt a little like being cheated not knowing the answer to that after having died and come back to life
It kept her up at night. That and the nightmares. Dreams of… the first contact war? It looked similar to some of the declassified vids she'd seen that had survived from that era. She found herself wondering why the Alliance telepaths who had examined her on Elysium hadn't seen that. She hadn't volunteered it, but they should have noticed. They hadn't. She had ideas about it. Maybe the Prothean Cipher in her head made her sufficiently alien to them that they couldn't correctly interpret what they saw? Maybe they HAD seen, and her sense that the door to those memories had remained shut was a delusion. But if that was the case, why hadn't they reported it?
She had too many questions without answers.
For that matter, how the hell did you just message people - people you cared about - right out of the blue to tell them, "Hey Liara, remember me? Turns out I'm not dead after all!"
… OK, so maybe she was having a harder time with this than she was comfortable admitting.
Jane spent five days in transit aboard the Santa Maria. It was a military transport ship, and an older model, but serviceable enough; Erewhon class transports like this one had seen extensive use in both the Second Contact and the Batarian wars as a vital part of fleet logistics. It wasn't glamorous, but it was safe and reliable, and that accounted for a great deal of its enduring popularity. It was about a kilometer long - a size unheard of outside of dreadnoughts in Citadel fleets - and it was a bulky, unelegant thing. Outside her little cabin, the ship had hummed with the peculiar resonance of hyperspace passage, occasionally interrupted by brief real-space transits to Mass Relays, and the lingering faintly sour smell of an aging water recycling system was an omnipresent if distant thing. The bulk of the journey was spent in hyperspace, the last three of which were continuous: the nearest Mass Relay to Earth was in the Exodus cluster, and although hyperspace was a considerably faster way to travel than the mass-effect based faster-than-light drives, it suffered limitations that Citadel FTL didn't have, and there was still a great deal of distance to cross. Supposedly, the Alliance Senate was debating whether or not Earth should construct its own Mass Relay out near the orbit of Pluto, but that had been argued off and on since Second Contact, and no one expected it to go anywhere anytime soon.
She had time to work on her physical training, to read over the material she'd been sent about the current state of the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit, and to decompress over the course of the voyage. And time for other worries. Too many of them, it felt like.
On the fifth day, the Santa Maria reached the outskirts of Sol. The delicate gravity bubble that kept a ship safe in hyperspace was disrupted when you got too close to a star system: something to do with the way the bubble interacted with the shadow that real-world gravity cast into hyperspace. With Jupiter at a particularly inconvenient spot in its orbit, they had to cycle down for their emergence into realspace at the hyperlimit about 45 AU out from Sol. The ship's gravity wave drives would take her the rest of the way to Earth, but Shepard wouldn't be on it: Gagarin Station at Pluto was her destination, and from there to take a quick hop in-system on an eezo powered FTL shuttlecraft - outside of wartime or emergency, eezo was just too rare and too expensive in Alliance space to waste moving a ship the size of the Santa Maria when it moved smaller vessels much more cost-effectively.
It wasn't a long journey. She got on the shuttle, it lifted off, it left Gagarin Station behind, it went to FTL. Ten minutes later, Mars hung in the forward viewscreen, and Shepard's heart lifted at the sight. Once, Mars had been a forbidding place, a world of reddish dust and lethal sandstorms. Today a third of the planet was covered in water, and though red-soiled deserts were a common sight, so too were vast, rolling plains, snow-clad mountains, and great forests: the product of over a hundred years of terraforming with Ethereal technology. The shuttle descended through the Martian atmosphere, and she watched as the world got bigger and bigger below her. Presently, the shuttle landed at the Aldrin Naval Base; Shepard gathered her things, nodded her thanks to the pilot, and headed down the ramp to where her contact would be waiting.
It was raining at Cydonia when they started two days later. Jane could hear the sound of the waves and the regular clatter of the little rocks on the beach as they shifted in time with those waves. The entrance to the XCOM compound stood on a cliff overlooking the the Acidalian Sea. It didn't look like much from the outside: just a tiny little fenced off settlement out in the middle of nowhere. Most of it was underground, and their ships came and went through submarine bays connected to the main base by a series of underground passages. The began outside the base, in the outer settlement's main courtyard, a holo-field hiding their presence for any who might look upon them from outside; twenty four people, Shepard among them, were gathered before a handful of severe looking trainers.
"Welcome to the XCOM training and evaluation center," one of the trainers said. He was at least part Chinese, extremely fit, dressed in an XCOM uniform, and his voice was surprisingly pleasant. "There are three possible outcomes to this evaluation. You pass and are admitted into our organization, you qualify for additional training and reevaluation, or you go home. You will be divided into four six-man squads. You will each be tested individually and as a team. We fully expect that out of the whole of you, perhaps two or three will qualify to train here with us until you meet XCOM standards. My name is Kai Leng. But for the duration of this evaluation, you may call me God."
They could hear the screams before the Skyranger's rear door opened. The sound of people screaming in complete and utter terror. It was mingled with other, inhuman shrieks. It was a sound at once familiar to Jane; she had often heard it in her dreams after Elysium, and every night since her resurrection: the hunting cry of a Cryssalid. She and five other XCOM recruits, armed with weapons and armor so primitive that they barely deserved the name, She was the only woman in the group, and only one of two Alliance personnel.
The door opened, and Jane felt the cold thrill of adrenaline. It was night in Union Square, and the St. Francis hotel was burning. "Go," Jane ordered.
They moved out. Two took up a covering position at the base of the ramp as she and the other three moved out. The alien Terror Vessel was gone, now - driven off by three XCOM interceptors working in tandem, but its cargo - a dozen floaters riding herd on two pods of Cryssalids - had been loose in downtown San Francisco for half an hour before the XCOM strike team arrived.
There were a lot more Chryssalids, now.
A dozen of the black and purple nightmares came shrieking out of the St. Francis' lobby, Shepard's team took cover at the monument at the heart of the square, only a few dozen yards from where Big Sky had set them down, and although their courage was tested, she would be damned before she'd let them break. "Grenades," she ordered. "Full spread. Get ready."
Each of them produced a frag grenade. The purple and black swarm skittered on, closing the distance between them with alarming speed. "NOW!" Shepard yelled
As one, Shepard and three of her squadmates threw their grenades. Each grenade landed well short of the oncoming swarm, but the rate at which they were covering the ground made up for that. The grenades exploded just as the Chryssalids reached them, and though the creatures could survive individual explosions, they did less well against multiple overlapping blasts. One Chryssalid made it through intact. It rushed directly for her, letting out its uncanny hunting howl as it went. Shepard fell back, raising her shotgun even as its bladed claws swung for her.
Gunfire sounded behind her: the two men on either side of the Skyranger's ramp opened fire, and their bullets ripped through the already wounded Chryssalid's exoskeleton, tearing the creature apart. It collapsed in a heap, twitched, and died.
Shepard let out a breath. They had survived the initial landing. So far so good.
It got worse from there. She had Private Anderson - her team's radio operator - link them up with local emergency responders. The police were working to cordon of all of Union Square, but the first few officers on the scene had died to alien plasma fire from a pair of Floater snipers up on the seventh floor of the hotel. Worse, that gave them an ideal position from which to fire on her squad as they approached the building. She considered the matter for a moment.
"Vega," she said, glancing at the Lieutenant to her left, "You're telekinetic, right?"
Vega was a thickly muscled man, hispanic, and the only other Alliance soldier on the team. "Sure," he said. "But we aren't supposed to use…"
Shepard concentrated for a moment, linking each of her team members telepathically. It wasn't quite a hive-mind, but it was close. The awareness of each squad member popped up adjacent to but distinct from her own. 'All right,' she sent over the link. 'When we cross the ground between here and the hotel, I want a telekinetic barrier protecting us the whole way. Be ready for Chryssalids, but leave any floaters to me.I'll make them see things our way.'
"With all due respect, Ma'am," Lieutenant Vega said, "Isn't that cheating? If we start using our abilities, we're not really fighting the way XCOM did back in the day. Not to mention, it won't exactly be an unfair fight."
Shepard didn't roll her eyes: that would have been the wrong response. Instead, she met his gaze unflinching, every word filled with the surety of authority. "It's not cheating to make use of your soldiers' capabilities in battle, Lieutenant," she said. "And if at any point you find yourself in a fair fight, somebody screwed up. Probably you."
Lieutenant Vega grinned. "Whatever you say, Lola," he said.
"Barrier. Now. We move in three. Two. One."
Vega put up the barrier, and the squad moved out. Sniper fire from the seventh floor went wide thanks to the mobile telekinetic shield. A Floater tossed a plasma grenade down on them when they got beneath the window, but Shepard gestured and used her own limited telekinetic abilities to send it back the way it had come. The dying screams of the two Floaters were very brief.
From there, the whole thing turned into a bug hunt. It was grueling, hunting down Floaters and Chryssalids floor by floor, sealing off accessways, getting civilians out, setting up to make sure they were never blindsided by either Chryssalids or Floaters - they wouldn't survive either instance with the equipment they had. But six hours later, they had cleared out the last Chryssalid and every floater lay dead, Jane had kept her entire squad alive, and they'd only lost three hundred civilians.
The simulation ended. San Francisco derezzed. Shepard awoke inside her VR pod, the neural interface bands de-clamping from either side of her head even as the pod opened and she sat up. A woman was there to help her up, and she took the hand that was offered. Then Shepard stretched, nodded to Vega and her other squadmates, and walked out of the chamber.
Kai Leng was waiting for her in the hall. Arms folded across his chest, his eyes inscrutable as he regarded her. "Commander Shepard," he said. "Walk with me." She did. They had been walking through the halls of the XCOM base for almost a minute, and were far distant from any potential eavesdroppers when Kai Leng said, "Please explain why you took it upon yourself to wield psionic abilities against the aliens in our simulation when the clear intent of the exercise was to put you into the shoes of the original XCOM squads."
Jane regarded the man calmly. "Because our ability to function with antiquated technology is not what was being tested in that scenario," she told him. "We were sent into the simulator, given weapons barely worthy of the name, and told that we would be running through XCOM's response to the first Alien Terror attack of the First Contact War. At no point were we ever ordered not to use such abilities. In fact, we were told to win by any means necessary. We did."
Kai Leng smirked. "You would be shocked how few ever realize that," he said. "Given your reputation as the idealistic 'hero of the Citadel,' I didn't expect that you would. I underestimated you. It will not happen again."
Jane nodded in acknowledgement.
"Do you know the actual outcome of that Terror Mission in the First Contact war, Commander?" Kai Leng asked.
Jane nodded, her expression distant. "They were all killed soon after landing," Jane replied. "The Chryssalid infestation spread throughout the city. All efforts to contain it failed. The American military ended up levelling most of San Francisco with thermobaric weapons to prevent the infestation from spreading further. I remember seeing it on the n…" she hesitated, "On one of the old war documentaries," she amended. She remembered watching it on the news at her sister's house in Lyon. It was the day before… she couldn't quite recall. But that couldn't possibly be right. "It was one of the worst defeats of the First Contact War," she said.
Kai Leng studied her carefully, and Jane was certain that he'd taken more from the conversation than she'd meant to give him. He nodded. "Indeed. Thank you, Shepard. And as one N7 to another, well done."
It went on like that. Tests and more tests. They'd do a mission in the simulator, they'd come out and do testing. Mental acuity. Hand/eye coordination. Never enough time to rest between missions. MELD went a long way towards keeping them functional, but even that had limits. Jackson and Anderson hit the wall at 53 hours. Their performance notably degraded. Their reaction times slowed. They became more liability than asset. They had half an hour between missions to rest. At first, there had been an easy camaraderie between the members of her team - Vega seemed particularly chatty, Shiota was more quiet and focused, but by and large they had all gotten along. Now, every break between missions was spent getting as much rest as possible, and as much sleep. Microsleeps became common. Shepard started feeling it herself around 70 hours. The testing went on for another ten. Then, finally, at 80 hours, they were all congratulated on their performance and told to get some rest.
The instructors began the 'base attack' simulation an hour and a half later.
It was brutal, and few 'survived.' Shepard and Vega were the only ones from her squad who made it to the end. Finally, after it was all over, her evaluation complete and every test passed, and given Kai Leng's reluctant blessing to begin work with XCOM immediately, Jane Shepard fell into a convenient rack and slept for almost 24 hours.
"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised," Miranda said as she reviewed Shepard's test scores. They were perfect. Flawless performance in all tests. Even at the end, 80 hours without sleep, she had come through with a perfect score, and the highest in the entire group of potential recruits. Only one other in the program's history had ever achieved a perfect score: Kai Leng. About the only disappointment that the evaluation group had when it came to Shepard was that her nervous system could not be adapted for biotics with any of the current MELD biotic templates. That was fairly common - only about 20% of the population was compatible with the current biotic templates, though that number's ascent to 100 was only a matter of time. But considering the raw psionic strength that she possessed even without amplifiers of any kind, Miranda felt that she could live without a biotic Shepard for the time being.
"It's to be expected," another woman replied, an almost German - Swiss, maybe? Rhineland? - accent coloring her words. She was older than Miranda, physically in her late forties - older than most people ever allowed themselves to get with access to Reversion. But she had been one of the first to test the process - long before it ever became available to the public - and Dr. Moira Vahlen, head of XCOM Research and Development, and one of only four remaining veterans of the original XCOM project, had always been more comfortable with an older body than a younger. "Particularly if Kai Leng's report is to be believed." Dr. Vahlen sat in a comfortable leather chair in an office that seemed for all the world to be suspended in space, a spectacular view of the Eagle Nebula and its Pillars of Creation spread out behind it, every infrared and ultraviolet color within the stellar nursery visible to the modern human's eye, where a baseline human would only have seen it with the aid of an artist. Miranda took a moment to admire the view.
"Do you like it?" Vahlen asked, gesturing to the backdrop.
"It's lovely," Miranda said.
"A gift from Mr. Harper. He's shown quite a talent for imaginative settings."
Miranda smiled politely. The only Harper she knew of was an extremely capable XCOM intelligence officer. "Of course," she said. Then, "Is there some reason we shouldn't believe Kai Leng's report?" she asked.
"It is a data point, of course," Vahlen said. "But more evidence is required before I will believe that your experiment has succeeded beyond its most basic parameters. I also remain unconvinced that there is any meaningful distinction between Commander Shepard and any of the clones that you used for replacement parts during your project, Miranda. I am open to the possibility, but even if I grant you your greater premise, by its very nature, it will be difficult to reproduce the results."
"The Volunteer was the strongest human psychic to have ever lived, Doctor," Miranda said. "If we can reclaim even part of that potential, discover what made her different, and duplicate that power in others, we may yet stand a chance against the Reapers." Doctor Vahlen made a face, and Miranda looked at her in askance, "You saw the beacon's transmission the same as I," she said.
Vahlen made a dismissive gesture, "It is not their reality that I find distasteful. Only the overly fanciful name. I do not dispute the difficulties in facing a sapient, apparently psionic dreadnought, much less a fleet of them. I simply believe that one should not overly complicate one's experiments. Either way, even with this Indoctrination as a factor to consider in our soldiers, Resurrection should prove an extremely useful technology."
"Thank you," Miranda said. "How is your own project coming along, by the way?"
Vahlen smiled. "The Enhanced Defense Intelligence shows great potential. I believe she will be ready when Shepard's mission departs."
Miranda raised an eyebrow. "You're putting her on the SR-2?" she asked.
"It seemed a suitable test bed."
"Now whose experiments are overly complicated?" Miranda asked. Vahlen didn't dignify that with a response. Miranda's omnitool beeped, and she stood up. "Shepard should be arriving any minute now. I'd better go meet her."
Vahlen's expression softened for a split second, and though she'd have missed it if she'd blinked, Miranda didn't - she saw it. "Good luck, Miranda," Vahlen said.
Miranda smiled mostly with her eyes. "Thank you, Doctor," she said.
Jane Shepard's first view of her new ship came from the back of a UT-47A Kodiak. Viewing her new ship from the passenger hold of the outdated, soon to be phased out shuttle that had transported her from Arcturus might have been a bad omen, but it didn't make it any less impressive. The shuttle had emerged from FTL about a million klicks out from the XCOM shipyard. The shipyard wasn't actually in a solar system - they'd built it in orbit of a rogue planet in interstellar space about 9 light years to the galactic north of Arcturus. The shipyard itself was a massive structure - nearly five kilometers across - and represented a massive logistical undertaking. It had six major berths, and all but one held ships in various stages of construction. Hers was the first.
The new ship was larger than the original Normandy, and less delicate-looking - from her size she was more destroyer than frigate. From prow to stern, she was 170 meters long; not counting the hybrid gravity wave drive's twin nacelles on either side near the ship's stern, its beam was only about 20 meters, though the nacelles more than doubled that. There were no windows. She was painted the same black and white as the original, though the red band had been replaced with blue, and she was every inch a warship: even as Shepard looked, her HUD identified the various point defense laser mounts dotting the hull. The ship had a spinal-mount - probably for a graser - and a pair of plasma cannons facing both fore and aft. She had four missiles tubes, and her broadside consisted of six retractable turrets each: three plasma, three laser. She bore no name: only the designation, 'SR-2,' but when Jane saw her, her heart filled with pride, and she knew what the new ship would be called.
Jane could hear the shuttle's pilot talking to the ship. A moment later, the shuttle quivered as the SR-2's tractor beams drew it into the cargo bay. There was a hiss as the shuttle door opened.
The sound of the bosun's pipe greeted her, with Miranda, Jacob, and - she smothered her surprise - Joker waiting along with a contingent of XCOM troops, all in full uniform. This wasn't strictly an Alliance ship, but XCOM was still military, and there were still formalities to be observed. "Permission to come aboard?" Shepard asked.
"Permission granted," Miranda replied.
Jane stepped out of the shuttle onto the deck of her new Normandy with a glow of pride.
It felt like coming home.
When the ceremony was over,, Joker walked up to her with a grin. "Hey, Commander," he said. "Just like old times, huh?" He offered his hand, and she shook it.
"I can't believe it's you, Joker," Jane said.
"Look who's talking," Joker replied. "I saw you get spaced."
"Apparently," Shepard said, her tone wry, "The only real certainty in life is taxes. Though I've got Miranda to thank for that." She glanced at Miranda, conveying gratitude with her expression.
"Taxes?" Joker asked with false innocence. It was the lead-in to some further joke that was cut off when Miranda said, "Just doing my job, Commander. You're welcome, however."
Jane looked out across the hanger, noting the storage bays for the mechanized assets the ship could deploy: she counted a dozen Seekers, two Sectopods, five SHIVs, and a full complement of drones both for ship repairs and for on-site support of mechanized assets. Not bad.
Jane, Joker, Jacob, and Miranda entered the elevator, and it swiftly carried them up to the CIC in the heart of the ship, where Shepard formally assumed command. She'd had time to read the information brief that XCOM intelligence had prepared for her on the flight over: she knew where the ship was going next. Stations were manned, systems powered up, and all checks completed.
"All right, people," Jane said. "We've got a lot of work to do and not a lot of time to do it. Comms, are we cleared to leave dock?"
Her comms officer - a professional looking dark haired woman - spoke a few words into her headpiece, then nodded. "We're clear, Captain," she said. Her voice announced her London accent. There was a distant thunk as the docking clamps disengaged.
"Joker, take us out."
There were further introductions after the ship had made the transition into hyperspace. She was still new to her crew, and she needed to meet with the heads of the various sections at least, and there was a great deal of paperwork to do, though there wasn't any actual paper involved. The comms officer was a Lieutenant in the Alliance on loan to XCOM. Her name was Traynor. Miranda would be serving as her XO. Doctor Chakwas had signed on as chief medical officer. And then there was EDI.
EDI waited to introduce herself until Shepard was in the privacy of her quarters reviewing the ship's books at her computer terminal.
"Commander," a woman's voice said. "May I come in?" It sounded slightly artificial, as though being routed through the sort of vocal processor common to MEC troops.
Jane glanced about. Her quarters were only a little larger than what she'd had on the original Normandy, though even that slight increase was a luxury to a woman who had spent her life on one spaceship or another. Her room was a bit sparse at the moment, with only her desk, computer terminal, bed, and closet; the only personal memento was the picture of Liara on the desk. No source of the voice was obvious. "Sure," she said. "Come in."
A woman appeared in front of the door. She was tall and gorgeous, her face utterly without flaw, her pale, wavy hair neck length, her body an ideal balance of defined muscle and pleasant curve, dressed in an XCOM uniform that she filled out extraordinarily well, and she was slightly blue and translucent. Her image gained definition after a few seconds, drawing upon the room's holo-emitter, and she lost the blue translucent effect, gaining definition as if she were physically present.
Jane didn't hide her surprise as well as she'd hoped; the woman smirked ever so slightly. "Hello, Commander," she said. "I feel I should introduce myself. I am the Normandy's artificial intelligence. The crew like to refer to me as EDI."
"The Normandy's artificial intelligence?" Jane asked, an eyebrow raised.
"Yes, Commander," EDI said. "I operate the ship's electronic warfare suite as well as the various unmanned mechanized units. While humanity has signed no treaties limiting the use of AI, my presence could be problematic in Citadel space. I believed it prudent to inform you of this in person. You should find notice of my presence and of my technical specifications in the ship's books."
"Fair enough," Jane said. "Welcome aboard, EDI."
EDI's avatar raised an eyebrow. "I am not newly embarked, Commander. I was installed into the Normandy's systems a week ago."
Jane shook her head bemusedly. "That's not what I meant," she said.
"Ah," EDI said in sudden realization. "You are welcoming me as Captain of the ship. As if I were another member of your crew. Interesting."
"Was there anything else, EDI?" Shepard asked.
"Not at this time," EDI replied. "Logging you out, Shepard." Her avatar vanished.
Freedom's Progress had little to recommend it to the casual visitor. It was an independent human colony out on the border of Alliance territory. Despite the fact that it was three weeks away from the nearest Mass Relay for any ship not capable of hyperspace translation, it was exactly the sort of place illicit smuggling of human technology to the Citadel races was likely to take place. Alliance patrols were irregular here at best, and that fact was not lost on Shepard or her crew. The colony had gone dark two days before the Normandy's launch. The Normandy was fast both in and out of hyperspace, and they would have been able to reach the G-type star's hyperlimit in three days if that's where they were going.
Shepard ordered the Normandy out of hyperspace five light-days and thirty light-minutes from the colony's G-type star. Even as the grav-drive cycled down from its hyperspace operational mode, Shepard frowned thoughtfully at her display. Hyperwave transmissions were significantly faster than light - faster than ships could move in hyperspace, even - so there'd be no catching those at this distance, but radio was possible. And they could observe the planet from this distance and watch what had happened as the light reached them.
"Bring up Freedom's progress on long range scanners," Shepard ordered. "Telescopes if you have to. I want to see what happened there."
It was only static at first. Then the science officer fixed the ship's passive sensors on the distant world, compensated for its orbital velocity, and brought up the brown and blue world on the primary display.
A Grey Ship hung over the planet like a bird of prey. Even as they watched, it engaged and destroyed the orbital defenses. A handful of ships rose up to meet it, but it swatted them out of the sky with almost contemptuous ease, firing with a purple beam weapon that just sheared through the local defense ships, cutting them into pieces like their armor wasn't even there. Another ship - an Asari style smuggler's vessel - lifted off from the planet, madly evading even as the Grey Ship fired upon it. It left the atmosphere. The Grey Ship bore down on it. It went to FTL.
Then the Grey Ship descended to the surface, and every human on the normandy with even the slightest bit of telepathic ability felt a chill that went to the bone, as if someone had just walked over their grave. All signals from the surface ceased.
Silence in the CIC.
"OK," Joker said, "What the shit was that?"
"We're going to find out," Shepard said. "Take us in, Joker. Nice and quiet. Lawson, Taylor, gather a team and meet me in the hanger. I want us headed for the surface as soon as we make orbit. And I want to know everything there is to know about that colony before we land."
Shepard headed down to suit up.
There was a little turbulence when the dropship hit atmo. It bounced and rattled a little, but that was all. Otherwise, it felt a lot like being on an elevator. Back at the academy, Shepard had once asked why that was. It had to do with the ship's artificial gravity easing off as the planet's natural gravity took over. Apparently, it was possible to completely negate all sensation of descent if you got the alignment of the emitters just so, but few people wanted to put in the extra work required to do so. So even on the brand new, top of the line 'Avenger' MK2 dropship, you were still aware of it.
As the dropship descended, Jane Shepard spared a look at the empty seats all around her. The Avenger was a multi-purpose craft, and though there were not yet civilian models, they would be coming along eventually. Besides bringing a nose-mounted rotary plasma cannon, two turret-mounted lasers, and a sophisticated electronic warfare suite to the table in any engagement, the Avenger was also fast, quiet, had hard points for missile pods, and was designed to transport as many as fourteen fully loaded combat troops. It was currently holding eight: Jane Shepard, Miranda Lawson, Jacob Taylor, and five XCOM marines, plus a heavy-plasma equipped hover-SHIV and pair of Seekers that EDI was operating remotely.
Taylor was suited up in his Mechanized Exoskeletal Cybersuit, and his helmet concealed his features. It was a savage-looking thing designed for urban combat, and equipped with a MEC-variant Firestorm on one arm, and what looked like an oversized, fully automatic alloy cannon in the other. Miranda had suited up in a biotic-amp suit - a suit of powered armor with biotic amplifiers far stronger than anything that could be mounted to the back of a person's neck. It took considerably longer to put on, but Miranda didn't complain. Shepard herself wore a new set of N7 powered armor, this one equipped with a full psionic amplifier suite. The rest wore modern variants of the old Titan suit.
"Shepard," EDI announced, her voice filtering through the speakers on the SHIV, "We are detecting Quarian lifesigns in colony, and the remains of a ship on the northwest landing pad."
"Acknowledged," Shepard said. Quarians. An Asari smuggler ship. The Grey Ships. Some kind of psionic attack. There was something else, too. Something on the tip of her tongue that she couldn't quite put into words. Something...
The Avenger set down at the south landing pad.
End Chapter 02
CODEX: Hyperspace Travel
Initially limited to telepathic signals sent via hyperwave beacon, human scientists eventually discovered a way to physically transport a starship into the alternate dimension which was the medium for hyperwave technology. Existing alongside normal space, the differing physical laws of this non-Euclidian 'hyperspace' allows for effective faster-than-light travel compared to travel by conventional means. Although faster by an order of magnitude than any non-Relay form of FTL travel, it is subject to limitations which conventional mass-effect based FTL drives do not have: massive sources of natural gravity such as stars and black holes cast a kind of shadow into hyperspace which is highly disruptive to nonpsionic beings and to any objects passing through them. While hyperspace travel through such areas is theoretically possible - evidenced by the fact that, during the First Contact War, the Ethereal Temple Ship accomplished this very feat, this capability has yet to be duplicated by human technology.
During the Second Contact War, despite their ships otherwise being outclassed by human vessels, the Turian fleet leveraged its ability to engage in FTL travel inside a star's hyperlimit to merciless effect. The capture and reverse-engineering of Turian designs and the subsequent development of the hybrid gravity wave engine, which allowed human vessels to make use of Mass Effect derived FTL travel, is today considered to have been the turning point in the war.
Author's note: Next chapter is coming along, as is the next chapter of New World in my View. We'll see which one is finished first.