All Sectoids were telepaths to some extent. This new Aquatic Sectoid was no exception. Miranda, on the other hand, was not telepathic. Or at least, she wasn't very much: like Sectoids, all humans possessed the Gift to at least a very small degree, and had for a very long time. It was why the Ethereals had come to Earth in the first place. Before the Ethereal invasion, the psi-effect in humans had been present, but so weakly present that the effect was indistinguishable from background noise. It had been effectively useless. Men and women could train their whole lives in the use of the Gift and never be able to do more than a few cheap, worthless parlor tricks that were far easier and more profitable to fake. All that had changed with the Ethereals and their experiments, which in turn had driven XCOM and EXALT's efforts to investigate psionic abilities. Humanity had Awakened.. Today, the percentage of the population who had the Gift strongly enough for it to be useful to them was approximately 40%, and growing steadily; it was expected to approach 100% some time in the next two or three hundred years.
Miranda had almost no talent for telepathy; if you plugged her into the strongest psi-amp available to human science, she could get vague impressions of people's surface thoughts, but that was the best she could do. Her telekinesis was a little better; with a proper psi-amp, she could manipulate objects weighing up to a few ounces at distances of up to a meter, but that was all. Suffice to say, her talents lay in other areas.
But a person did not need to be a telepath in order to make use of a mind probe. The technology had come a long way since the First Contact War. Once upon a time, mind probes has been a literal description, consisting of a series of invasive cranial probes which gave you access to the subject's cerebral cortex. Interpretation of the data thereby gathered was a delicate and painstaking process, often leading to the death of the subject. Today's mind probes were much cleaner: they were smooth spherical devices which allowed the user direct access to the subject's field of consciousness. Properly slaved to a suitably programmed alliance commlink (they were specifically made to be incompatible with Citadel omnitools as a security feature), the mind probe was an invaluable tool for interrogation and intelligence gathering. It was mechanical telepathy, though because it operated without a sentient mind's direct access to what researchers (and no one else) called 'conchspace,' the inverse-square law still applied, which limited the range to about three meters for a portable unit.
The Sectoid was strapped to a table in the Normandy's high security Alien Containment unit up on deck 1, located under the exterior pressure hull, and designed to be able to vent every prisoner contained therein into space at a moment's notice should it be necessary to do so. Miranda wore a full NBC-suit for the whole affair; one never knew what sort of infectious properties an alien might have, and if there was anything the XCOM science department had learned, it was that it was better safe than zombie.
"Can you understand me?" Miranda asked.
The aquatic sectoid stared at her, making no response whatever. She tried again in other languages, using an Alliance commlink to automatically translate what she was saying. Nothing on any of the more common Earth languages. No reaction to the major Citadel languages. Then she tried a few of the more obscure ones, and her eyebrows shot upward when it visibly reacted to Hanar, which consisted entirely of sophisticated patterns of bioluminescence. Information shot across Miranda's comm-display when the language centers of the Sectoid's brain went active. She spoke several sentences which were duly translated via holofield. Then she asked, "Who are you?"
The sectoid's voice was entirely telepathic. It wasn't words in any language so much as thought/concepts, sensory impressions and a sense of inexplicable connection between ideas. It had no lips, no voice box to produce sound, and yet it spoke; its first words were of longing, of division between brothers, friends swept away by a terrible foe who sought to uplift them into the same darkness which had consumed the Fallen Ones. It studied Miranda for a few seconds, and then its eyes widened. "You bear the touch of the Fallen Ones," it 'said.'
"Who are the Fallen Ones?"
The creature hissed angrily, and she had the distinct impression that if it could have spat, it would have. "Fallen. Outcast. Those who failed to Ascend. Who proved unworthy of the gods. The fingerprints of the Fallen upon you. Their blasphemous technology in your hands. Their touch upon your minds."
"And that is why you are attacking human colonies?"
"Attack. Study. Dissect. Experiment. Determine."
"What are you trying to determine?"
Silence, even in its thoughts. It didn't know.
The interrogation lasted for an hour. Many, many questions were asked, and though few answers were helpful, the alien couldn't lie to the mind-probe: not without a hell of a lot more psionic strength than it had. Afterwards, Miranda forwarded the information retrieved to both Shepard and to Vahlen. Then she left the containment area, performed standard decontamination procedures, changed back into her standard uniform, and made her way to the conference room. .
Jane Shepard and Jacob Taylor were there waiting for her. As she came into the conference room, Miranda said, "Well, that was unpleasant." She looked to Shepard. "You've reviewed my report?" she asked.
Jane nodded. "Only just finished. Didn't the Ethereals claim that they had failed to Ascend?" Jane asked.
"Yes," Miranda said. "It's in the log of XCOM's final mission of the First Contact War."
"So it may not be the Ethereals after all," Jane mused. "It sounds to me like there's some sort of religious conflict going on between the Ethereals and these… Aquatic Sectoids. Aquatoids?"
"We can name them later," Miranda said.
"The enemy of my enemy," Jacob said. "I hear that's supposed to be your friend."
Jane smirked. "Sometimes. But most times, the enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more, no less." The smirk faded. "I'm more than a little worried by the fact that the Aquatoid was able to understand the Hanar language."
"Are we really going to call it that?" Miranda asked.
Jane waggled her eyebrows, and Miranda sighed.
"Its knowledge of the hanar language is certainly suggestive," Miranda said. "Do we have a plan for the prisoner?"
"Central wants it," Jane replied. "They're sending the Iwo Jima to meet us at the Mass Relay."
"That was quick," Jacob said. "I didn't realize we had another Normandy class destroyer finished."
"It was finished shortly after the Normandy," Miranda said. "It launched today." A pause. "If I may ask, Commander, why the Mass Relay?"
"Because it's three weeks using Citadel FTL to get there from here," Jane replied.
Miranda thought about it. "Ah. The Asari smuggler ship."
"Got it in one." Jane said.
Jacob looked amused, though he didn't actually laugh. "Any bets on the look on the captain's face when she comes out of FTL and finds us already waiting for her?" he asked.
"I'm gonna go with 'surprise,'" Jane said.
Smoke on the Water
by P.H. Wise
A Mass Effect/XCOM crossover fanfic
Chapter 04: Complications
Disclaimer: I own neither Mass Effect (EA) nor XCOM (God only knows) nor Terror from the Deep.
That evening, Jane let the door to her cabin slide shut behind her as she entered, and let out a breath. It was modest in size - not much bigger than her quarters on the original Normandy, and its design was a testament to efficient use of space. It was divided into two main rooms: her living quarters and her office. Both were small. Living quarters area held her bed - which could be hidden behind a sliding wall if she so chose, though that made the place feel downright claustrophobic - her dresser, a very small bathroom, and a tiny shower that could maybe hold two people if they were very friendly. There was a very small couch built into the wall on the side of the room opposite her bed, and a pair of chairs in front of a coffee table in the middle of the room that made it inconvenient to walk around in the small space, as there was no part of the room that they were not in the way of getting to from any other part. Her office was equally small, having exactly the requisite amount of space and no more for her desk, a chair, her data terminal, and a few personal items.
A picture of Liara stood on the desk. She immediately recognized it: she'd taken it the day before the Grey Ship had attacked the original Normandy. The day before everything had gone wrong. Jane had just gotten off shift, and Liara was waiting for her in her quarters. She'd known that before she'd gone in: her lover or not, part of her team or not, Liara wasn't an Alliance crewmember, and she wasn't allowed in the more sensitive areas of the ship. And she didn't go anywhere without an escort, even if that escort had been on friendly terms with Liara towards the end.
The guard was standing outside the door, and he'd saluted as she approached. She'd released him back to his normal post. She'd taken the photo with her commlink, Liara sitting at the desk, reading the old, beat up copy of Dark Day, by Edward Prima. It was an old book, written a little after 2040, now considered a classic. One of those books you keep on your shelf because you think you should, but which few people ever actually read.
Liara had looked up and smiled afterwards, but the way she looked there, in that photo, so focused, so immersed in the book had made her look so damn cute...
Jane sank down into the chair. Responding to her thoughts, the data terminal went active.
There was a message waiting. A lot of messages waiting, actually. Several dozen from various news organizations that wanted to interview her. A few junk messages her spam filters hadn't caught for one reason or another. A message from Admiral Hackett giving official notice of her secondment to XCOM.
A message from Hannah Shepard.
She almost didn't open it. She almost deleted it without even reading it. It wasn't that she didn't want to talk to her mother, it was just… so much had happened. Where did she even start? A sense of helplessness washed over her, then, and the feeling offended her so much that she immediately opened the message out of sheer, stubborn contrariness.
From: Mom
So I have to find out my daughter is alive third-hand from a news report? Where the hell have you been? Why didn't you send word? Are you okay? Please, Jane, contact me as soon as you can.
Love,
Your mother, Captain Hannah
Mom. There were few words in the English language more complicated than what was contained in that one syllable. Few relationships that meant more. Few people who could hurt you the way a mother could.
Hannah hadn't reacted well when Jane had first told her about Liara, and it had been bad. Things got strained, and that had hurt. It had hurt a lot. It wasn't the lesbian thing; nobody thought homosexuality was a big deal anymore, and even in traditionally conservative bastions like the Arabian Bloc and the Egyptian Cartel, it hadn't been an issue for over a hundred years. If Jane had told her her mother about a human woman she'd been seeing, Hannah would have just been happy for her. But relationships with aliens were still a heavy lift - especially for people of her mom's generation. Her mom had started to come around near the end. Things had been getting better. Hannah had apologized for the way she'd reacted, and they had even both arranged their next vacations to coincide so they could meet up on Mars for Christmas, and Hannah and Liara could meet.
Jane centered herself, letting the remembered hurt fade away. Her mom deserved better than to hear about her being alive from the news.
She replied to the message.
From: Jane
Hi, Mom. I know I should have sent this message earlier. A lot's happened, and I don't know how much I can tell you, but I'm alive, and I'm okay. Send Grandma and Grandpa my love.
Love,
Jane
Grandma and Grandpa Shepard. She hadn't thought about them since her return. They were back on Mars these days as far as Jane knew. Claire Durand and John Shepard. Good people, if a little stuck in their ways. She hadn't told them about Liara. Her mother might have understood, but her grandparents had been part of the second generation born after the First Contact War, and they tended to be less… flexible. The fact that her grandmother was the Goddamn Volunteer's great-niece didn't help there.
She settled in to do some paperwork. It was all digital, yes, but it was still paperwork, and there was a lot of it to do as the captain of a starship. It was hours later, around 0200, and she was just starting to think of going to bed when the comm chimed. She answered. "Yes?"
"Commander," Doctor Chakwas said through the comm, "I thought you should know. Tali is awake."
A little knot of worry in her heart unclenched, and Jane smiled. "I'll be right there," she said.
She walked into the medical bay a few minutes later.
Inside the hermetically sealed, sterilized recovery room, Tali was awake, and still a little groggy, and she had a truly spectacular case of bed hair. She looked up when Jane knocked on the glass, and it took a second for her eyes to focus. She still looked bad. Feverish and brittle. But better than she'd looked this afternoon. "Shepard?" she asked, and then coughed. It sounded bad.
"Hey Tali," Jane said. "How are you feeling?"
Tali eyed Jane dubiously, becoming more awake by the moment. "I was shot, my suit suffered catastrophic failure, I nearly died of sepsis, I'm still running a fever, I have a nasty cough, my sinuses are filled with something I can't even describe, and the only reason I'm even alive is because your nanotechnology is temporarily acting as an artificial immune system, and you want to know how I'm feeling?"
Jane thought about apologizing. She didn't, but she thought about it. Instead, she doubled down, her tone gaining a dry edge to it. "Yeah," she said. "How are you feeling?".
"Never better," Tali said.
Jane nodded, just barely able to stop herself from grinning. "It's good to see you, Tali. Better to have you alive."
Tali smiled. It was wide, and a little bit goofy, and completely genuine, and it seemed to light up her whole face, and at the sight of it, Jane's struggle not to grin abruptly failed. "It's good to see you, too, Shepard," Tali said.
"Can you tell me what happened?" Jane asked. "Down on the planet?"
Tali's smile faded, and the room itself seemed less bright. "I'm sure you've heard that the Migrant Fleet has been in talks with Edgars Industries to develop a genemod to give my people fully functional - or better than fully functional - immune systems," she began.
"Edgars," Jane said thoughtfully. "I've heard of them. Based on Mars, right?"
Tali nodded. "Yes. And the truth is, we've come a lot further than just talks. We settled on contract a little while after the Quarian embassy was established on Terra Nova. The product has moved beyond its initial studies and animal testing, and is now at the point at which the only way to move forward is to actually give it to Quarian volunteers. A Quarian on Pilgrimage named Veetor was supposed to make contact with representatives of Edgars on Freedom's Progress and take them to the Migrant Fleet. We were going to start a double-blind study with two hundred Quarian subjects. But as the time of the meeting approached, the Admiralty grew concerned about Veetor's reliability. He's always been… unstable. Sensitive. And they determined that a failure here would be a disaster for the Fleet."
"So they sent you," Jane said.
Tali nodded. "Me and Kal'Reegar and a full squad of Migrant Fleet Marines. The invisible ships came the day of the meeting."
Jane blinked. "Invisible ships?" she asked, putting a slight emphasis on the first word.
"I know it sounds crazy," Tali said. "But whatever attacked the colony, we couldn't see it. I know there was more than one of them. They took out the garrison fleet, and then there was a sound." She looked troubled, "It didn't sound like Sovereign's horn, but that's the only thing I can compare it to. It had the same… sense to it." Tali shook her head. "I don't know if that makes any sense. But after the sound, a little more than half the humans in the colony just collapsed. Then the aliens started landing. It was..." She shuddered. "It was very bad, Shepard."
"How did you survive?"
"We hid," Tali admitted. "There was nothing we could do otherwise. We hid in a bombardment shelter. I think they knew we were inside: when we came out a few days after the last sign of activity, the green-gray creatures were waiting for us. We fought our way to security, and then to the Infirmary. You know the rest." She took a breath. "I don't know whether to be relieved or infuriated by what happened to the Edgars representatives."
Jane raised an eyebrow. "What happened to them?"
"We found out after the raid. I managed to break into the colony's security system. They and the test batch were captured by an Asari commando team half an hour before the invisible ships arrived. They did a very thorough, very careful job of erasing the security record, but not good enough. We suspect Eclipse, but we can't prove it."
The Asari freighter. Damn it. Of course anyone who'd gotten wind of the arrangement between the Migrant Fleet and Edgars Industries would want that test batch. Working MELD samples were highly sought after in Citadel space, much less MELD designed to introduce human-made gene-mods into a dextro-amino acid species..
Jane activated her omni-tool to project the image of the primary Grey Ship that had attacked the colony. "Tali," she said, "When you look at this image, what do you see?"
Tali regarded the picture with a slightly confused look that was echoed in her thoughts. "Freedom's Progress, seen from high orbit?" A pause. "What am I supposed to see here, Shepard?"
Jane hesitated, but only for a second. Then she connected telepathically to Tali, and showed her.
Tali's eyes went wide.
"Well," Miranda said, "That seems to corroborate Kal'Reegar's story."
They were in the conference room, and the table that was its centerpiece gleamed in the light. Jane nodded. "So. Quarians can't see the Grey Ships. You'd think we would have discovered this earlier."
Miranda shrugged. "Tali'Zorah was never in a position to have seen the Grey Ships on the SR-1. For that matter, neither was Liara T'soni, so we have no idea whether Asari can see the Grey Ships. Tali'Zorah and T'soni were on the crew deck when engineering blew out. Both were evacuated to escape pods, and neither had a view of what was happening with the ship afterwards." She paused, shifting mental gears. "Of course we can't allow whoever the Asari commandos were working for to keep the Meld and the Edgars representatives. The only question is, do we intercept them en route to the Mass Relay, or do we shadow them to their destination so we can find out who hired them in the first place?"
"I promised Tali we'd recover the Meld samples," Shepard replied. "Intercept. If we're quick, we can take the ship and give EDI direct access to their logs before they can wipe them, and find their employers that way."
Miranda frowned. "Critical systems on ships tend to be hardwired for exactly that reason, Commander. You can't just 'hack in' from an extranet connection. In order to do what you're suggesting, we'd need to get someone direct access to their computers who could set up a wireless connection for EDI to piggyback into the system on. We'd need a combat engineer to pull that off, and a good one. We don't have th…" she trailed off in sudden realization. "Oh, Commander. You didn't."
Shepard couldn't quite keep the smile off her face. "Didn't what, Miranda?"
"I suppose you plan to bring Liara aboard as well?" Miranda asked.
Shepard's smile became a grin.
"Shepard," Miranda said with exaggerated patience, "The Extraterrestrial Combat Unit isn't the Alliance Foreign Legion. It is not where we put all the aliens who are helping us fight." Her voice gained a harder edge. "We are an organization intended to fight nonhuman threats to the human race."
"Tali is the best combat engineer I've ever seen," Jane said. "Liara is both a brilliant scientist and a capable fighter. I couldn't have stopped Saren without the two of them, and there is no one, human or alien, that I would rather have at my back. Hell, I even had a C-Sec officer helping me out from the inside for most of the mission to stop Saren with his supervisors none the wiser. A Turian named Garrus Vakarian. He's good people, and I'd have taken him aboard the old Normandy if I thought I could have gotten away with it. The point is, you recruited the hero of the Citadel, Miranda. If you didn't want me in charge of this mission, you shouldn't have put me in charge."
Miranda's expression grew progressively darker as Jane spoke, and by the end, though she didn't say it aloud, her thoughts were full of some of the most interesting curses that Jane had ever heard. "I see," Miranda said in a surprisingly calm voice. "Are there any other aliens you'd like to add to the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit, or is it just these two?"
"I was thinking about hiring a Krogan mercenary or two," Jane said with a wink.
Miranda tried not to grind her teeth. "I assume you have a plan beyond 'board them, shoot them, be quicker than them?" she asked.
"Oh, yes," Jane replied.
Step 1: find the Asari ship
Knowing that the Asari ship, having departed Freedom's Progress five days prior, was at least two weeks and change from the Relay gave Jane a certain freedom. Her intent was to lie in wait along the ship's trajectory with the Normandy's stealth drive already active when she came out of FTL, matching her velocity as much as possible. There was a whole zone of possible exit vectors, which was why they needed to deploy a pair of hyperwave equipped probes to give them at least two data points for the Asari ship's course. Unfortunately, while anyone with a properly encoded hyperwave relay could receive hyperwave transmissions, only a telepath could actually send them. Which meant that for FTL communication, outside the range of a Mass Relay and its associated comm buoys, you needed an actual physical human being in place to do the job. For ships like the Normandy, that meant using communication pods.
Nobody liked them. They were an incredibly inelegant solution, and they were basically hell for the poor specialists left in them for days at a time. Each was essentially a lifeboat designed to hold a single person, a passive sensor suite, a hyperwave relay, a toilet, and enough food and water to ensure the specialist's survival for the duration. The pod's computer system was designed to automatically bring the operator out of whatever VR sim he or she was using to pass the time the moment it detected anything the VI decided merited the operators attention. Other than that, it was just the operator and the starlit emptiness. Tradition was that anyone who went into such a pod had free drinks at the ship's Captain's expense next shore leave.
The Normandy deployed four such pods along the two most likely flight paths to the Relay: one was the course for optimal fuel-efficiency, the other was the course for fastest transit time.
They had time to meet up with the Iwo Jima at the relay, and transferred the Aquatoid prisoner, the Aquatoid and 'evil ichneumon squid' cadavers, and most of the recovered artifacts. Shepard also, at Jacob Taylor's request, requisitioned another pair of Archangel powered armor suits from the Iwo Jima's stores, with plans to get at least a full squad's worth once they returned to Alliance territory, given that they were the only powered armor platform that allowed a person to maneuver reasonably well under water.
Jane also had time to arrange for Tali's and Kal'Reegar's suits to be repaired, allowing them to leave the medlab, though as per standard procedure, neither was allowed into sensitive areas of the ship. While no starship had the kind of energy output or space to spare to mount a full fledged nanoforge, the use of assembler nanites to repair damaged materials was easy enough, though the vulnerable microscopic robots couldn't operate without risk of damage outside of a Faraday cage; although MELD itself held up reasonably well on account of its E/M resistant partially biological structure, the purely mechanical nanites necessary for dedicated construction roles, by their very nature as microscopic robots, could not include much in the way of E/M shielding. Most people considered that a plus, as it cut down the likelihood of Grey Goo scenarios.
They got a ping from one of the comm-pods a few days later, and another a few days after that. Two data points formed the line they needed: the Asari ship was taking the fastest time route. Everything went like clockwork from there into step 2: match the freighter's course and velocity when it comes out of FTL. Joker had the Normandy in position, on course, her stealth drive engaged, and at the correct velocity when the Asari freighter emerged from FTL.
Technically, calling the Asari freighter a smuggler ship wasn't perfectly accurate, but it was of a model so notoriously commonly used for smuggling in Citadel films and popular culture that it had become associated with the activity even in the minds of non-Citadel races. When the Asari freighter neared the Mass Relay, it was still firing its forward thrusters to decelerate. It had clearly been running hot, and its relatively high velocity - still at nearly .2c when it showed up on the Normandy's sensors. It'd reach a safe velocity for Relay transit by the time it actually reached the relay, but only just. It was a relatively small ship, about 100 meters from stem to stern, and like many Asari ship designs, it had a certain yonic aesthetic. It wasn't blatant, but you could see it if you looked for it, particularly if you viewed the freighter from above.
Once, a few years after the end of the human/turian war, a drunk human corporate representative at a party on the Citadel had flat out asked an Asari Matriarch why Asari ships were shaped like vaginas. The Matriarch took exception to that, and replied with a few choice cutting words regarding the male human obsession with phallic-shaped ships and weapons. Naturally, the soon-to-be out of work human corporate rep responded by growing angry and belligerent. Well, more angry and more belligerent. Things degenerated from there. To this day, the party in question remains the only official Citadel soiree since the beginning of the Krogan Rebellion to have ended in a full scale drunken brawl.
Jane wasn't entirely sure why she'd thought of that just now, but it made her miss Liara.
A lot of things made her miss Liara.
Joker began accelerating the ship to compensate for the unexpectedly high post-FTL velocity of the Asari freighter.
"All right," Shepard said. "What do we have?"
"The transponder says she's the MV Atesan," Lieutenant Yamada reported. "The Freedom's Progress logs indicate that she took on a load of trade goods there - mostly textiles, spices, a few tons of chocolate." She paused. "The list is quite extensive, but none of it is questionable."
"Sounds about right," Jane said. Something about that ship's silhouette bothered her. She couldn't quite put her finger on what it was, but her instincts told her something was amiss. Before she could pursue the thought, Miranda walked into the CIC, and Jane nodded to her as she arrived. "Miranda," Jane said.
"Commander," Miranda said. "I think we're ready."
Right. Time to actually carry out this plan.
Tali'Zorah vas Neema was feeling better. Weeks of MELD treatment had restored her to full health, but she hadn't really felt like herself until she had her suit back, and repaired.
"It feels heavier," she'd noted at the time. "It's only barely noticeable."
Shepard had nodded. "I arranged for a few upgrades. A thin layer of Vahlloy enhanced with a carbon nano…"
"Vahlloy?" Tali had asked before Shepard could get any further into the explanation.
Shepard had smiled. "Sorry. Old joke. The technical name is 'Cydonium,' even if hardly anyone calls it that."
Terran Alloys. Shepard had upgraded her suit with Terran Alloys. Among the Migrant Fleet, Terran Alloys were one of the most highly prized building materials, incredibly rare, and incredibly expensive, and Shepard had just upgraded her suit's armor with it out of hand. And that was good, because Shepard was about to take her with a team of XCOM marines to raid an Asari freighter full of commandos. Now, standing in the cargo bay with six XCOM marines in suits of powered armor that made them all a full foot taller, as Shepard briefed them on the operation, Tali felt a surge of nostalgia. All they needed now would be for the Geth to make an appearance, and it would be just like old times.
"... and these are our hostages," Shepard said, the hologram between them showing images of two humans: a male and a female, both in business suits, both wearing very serious expressions. His skin was dark. Hers was pale. "We are going to rescue Doctor Johnson and Doctor Ivanova." Names appeared beneath each in turn, labelling the man as Edward Johnson and the woman as Sofie Ivanova. "We are going to bring them back alive and unharmed. We are going to recover the stolen property, and ideally, we are going to do it without anyone on that freighter knowing we were there."
The marines didn't visibly react. They just waited for Shepard to continue.
"I want to underline this fact," Shepard said. "We do not expect to see combat. If everything goes according to plan, not one of you will fire your weapons." She made a gesture, and holographic image of the freighter replaced the image of the hostages. "In order to gain access to the freighter without being seen, we are going to fly one of our Avenger dropships to a point just above the freighter's thruster envelope. It would be more dangerous of they were accelerating, but it's still not entirely safe." Her eyes went to Tali. "This is the first point where you come in, Tali."
Tali swallowed.
"Tali'Zorah nar Rayya is our mission specialist. Tali, we're going to need you to deploy your drone to cut open an external panel. You will then splice into said panel with this." She produced a bag from below the armory station.
Tali walked forward to retrieve the bag, opened it, and blinked. "This must be," She checked. "Shepard, this is ten meters of fiber cable. What am I supposed to..." Then she got it. "Oh, Keelah," she said.
"Once Tali'Zorah splices into the ship's network, she and EDI will disable the cargo airlock depressurization sensors and loop the security cameras before actually getting us in. From there, we have three main objectives:" The image of the freighter zoomed in to display internal schematics, showing the layout of a standard freighter of the Atesan's make and model, highlighting the crew areas, the cargo hold, and the location of the mainframe. "Recover the cargo, rescue the hostages, and gain direct access to the ship's mainframe, at which point EDI will recover the ship's logs and erase all evidence that we were ever aboard. Any questions?"
The Avenger dropship engaged its visual cloak as it flew out of the Normandy's hanger and into interstellar space, and the dropship pilot expertly maneuvered it to approach the Atesan from just above her thruster envelope: a well known but potentially deadly blind spot in the sensor suite of most Citadel-race starships. It was a delicate operation, finding the correct ratio of safety vs stealth. As long as the Atesan maintained her current course and speed, all would be well; if she flared her fusion torch drive and the Avenger pilot had judged the distances incorrectly, the dropship would be destroyed in short order.
With the ship in position, the rear hatch opened, and Tali'Zorah vas Neema floated out in the distinctive white of Archangel armor.
It felt just as weird as the last time she'd worn Terran armor during the fight against Saren, with all its absurdly responsive controls and enhanced physical abilities, but this time it had the added weirdness of the grav-unit . The gravity control unit allowed her to define whatever direction she wanted as down, could nullify the effect of gravity on her completely, and could be scaled up from zero-g to five times Thessia-standard, with an inertial dampener system to keep the user reasonably comfortable at that acceleration. The controls took some getting used to, but the automatic safeties helped, and once you mastered the controls, it allowed for an unparalleled mobility in a personal armor platform; the only way to improve it would be to add an eezo core to allow it to also take advantage of the mass effect. The five-fingered hand would have been impossible to control without the neural interface: she didn't have to move the fingers individually, she just had to try to move her hand, and the suit adjusted. The armor pinched a little bit around the hips, but that was probably because she had her suit on under it.
Oh, and the weirdest thing about this mission? She was working with an AI. EDI had been an extremely unpleasant shock. She'd heard that humans used AI, but she'd never thought they'd be so foolish as to make one the integrated computer system in charge of a warship! ...Then again, you couldn't really expect humans to learn from the mistakes other species had made. For all that Tali liked Shepard, and Ashley, and Kaiden, a lot of humans had this annoying superiority complex going that made them hard to deal with. And she was pretty sure that sooner or later, EDI was going to go crazy, kill everyone, and take over the ship. That was just how these things went.
Floating in the void, suspended on nothing, Tali deployed her drone and went to work. It was slow, difficult work, and she was just glad that the panel she had chosen wasn't anywhere near a window.
Ten minutes in, Tali paused in her work, considering the oddly shaped, barely visible hatch about a half meter to the left of the access panel Chiktika was busily cutting into. That shape bothered her: Particularly the way it blended into the hull such that you could only really make it out when you were right up next to it. She glanced to the right, and though it was equally hard to make out, sure enough, another barely visible hatch could be seen. A thought occurred to her, then: A deeply worrying thought. "Shepard," she said, "Do those look like gun ports to you?"
There was a pause on the other end of the line. After about a second, Tali's HUD updated with new information about the freighter's engine: it was a military-grade antiproton drive. Then Jane's voice came on the line: "Rescue team, update on mission parameters: we have reason to suspect the freighter you are about to board is a q-ship. Be prepared for armed resistance."
A few minutes longer saw the completion of Chiktika's task. Then Tali deactivated the drone, flew over to the panel, detached the panel cover and examined the innards. The setup was more complicated than she'd hoped, and there were security features not found in standard wiring: she had to precisely calibrate a mass effect field around the fiber cable end she was splicing into the ship's wiring in order to avoid causing a disruption of the ship computer's technical faster than light (actually decreasing the mass of the space inside the fiber wiring to make the speed of light faster within it) processing speed. After a few minutes of nerve-wracking work requiring an excruciating level of focus, Tali successfully spliced into the ship's network, and then connected the fiber cable to the commlink she'd been provided. "I'm in," she said.
"As am I," EDI reported. "Attempting to gain access to ship systems. Limited access granted. Disengaging decompression sensors in the cargo bay."
Tali tried to follow the AI's activity, but she was only able to catch a very small part of it.
Connecting to local network…
… Access ID Spoofed.
… Encryption Keys generated.
… ICbreaker protocols engaged.
… Generating subnodes...
… Subnodes generated.
… Access granted.
Then a wall of data seemed to drown out any sort of intelligible content as EDI accessed everything she could reach through the splice. Tali quickly gave up trying, and instead set up a quick video loop on the security cameras in the cargo bay.
"Stage 1 complete," Tali reported.
"Stage 2 complete," EDI said a moment later. If computers could frown, EDI would have. "The cargo bay computer system is not networked with the rest of the ship. I am unable to access ship systems beyond the cargo bay. There is an unarmored Asari in the cargo bay." Another pause. "I have access to the local environmental controls."
"Is the cargo bay on a separate air system from the rest of the ship?" Shepard asked.
"It is," EDI replied.
"Can you disable her before we enter?" Shepard asked.
"I believe I can," EDI said.
"Do it."
Another pause. "Target disabled," EDI said. "No further presence detected within the cargo bay."
"I have the door whenever you're ready, Shepard," Tali said, feeling both gratified and a little disturbed by just how good of a team she and the AI were.
"Open the outer airlock," Shepard said. "We're coming in."
Once inside, Tali noted the fallen Asari in the middle of the cargo bay. She wasn't moving. "Shepard asked you to disable her, not kill her," Tali said.
"Most forms of organic life find death to be extremely disabling," EDI replied.
Tali's eyes narrowed.
"That was a joke," EDI said.
"So she's alive?" Tali asked.
"She is alive," EDI confirmed.
"She's also not dying?" Tali asked suspiciously.
"You have a very suspicious mind," EDI said.
"That's not a 'no,'" Tali said.
EDI's digital avatar on Tali's HUD actually rolled her eyes. "She is not dying, Tali."
The cargo bay was the largest room in the freighter, and it was both full of cargo and almost spotlessly clean. White and off-white shipping containers were neatly stacked and obsessively organized: everything in its place, and everything clearly labelled. One was labelled textiles, another Terran spices, several containers devoted to varieties of Terran booze - most of it wine and whisky. The lion's share was devoted to chocolate, though there was also one incongruous crate labelled as containing canned peaches, sodas, and a half dozen cheese graters. Opening it revealed only the items declared thereupon. Not that Shepard and her team had much time to open crates: when they boarded the Atesan, they were quick to secure the cargo bay as they prepared to move out to accomplish their various objectives. Once more, the squad divided into two four-man teams. Team two would hold position here to cover their exit. Team one would move through the ship and accomplish the objectives.
Team one was Jane, Tali, Sgt. Jones, and a heavy weapons specialist by the name of Kenneth Turnbow. Private Turnbow was a very large, athletic black man, his head shaved bald, with sharp brown eyes and an honest face, though none of that could be seen at the moment: each member of Team One was wearing Archangel armor with full helmets.
They activated their stealth modules and vanished from the visible spectrum of light. Guided by the ultraviolet and infrared spectrums plus the sensor suites of a dozen cloaked microdrones sent out to find their targets, Team One moved out into the ship. Even with their grav-packs, it was awkward: the Atesan wasn't made with Alliance powered armor in mind, and in some places they came perilously close to bumping into a passing guard or other member of the Atesan's crew. It quickly became obvious that this was no merchant crew: there were too many Asari commandos, and the crew went about their tasks with a distinctly military discipline that civilian crews just didn't have. Add to that the military-grade hardsuits and the strange rifles they were carrying, and it all but screamed Q-Ship. They spent five minutes making their way to the crew quarters. Then Jane spoke across their team's telepathic link: "Chances are, we're only going to get one shot at this, and when we free the prisoners, we're going to set off every alarm on the ship. Tali, you and Sgt. Jones head to the main computer terminal. I want EDI in that system ASAP. Turnbow, you're with me."
Entering the crew section was tricky. The doors were guarded by a pair of Asari, and Jane and Turnbow had to wait for someone to come out before they were able to slip inside. About a minute later, they got final confirmation on their targets from the microdrone sensor feed: one of them had made it into the ventilation system and even now had a visual of Doctor Johnson being interrogated by an Eclipse-uniformed Salarian with a small silver orb that Jane recognized immediately: an Alliance mind probe.
"Shepard," Tali said, her mental voice echoing too loudly in the telepathic link: a sign of telepathic inexperience. "We're in. I just need a few minutes to establish the uplink to EDI. And I know I've said this before, but these visual cloaks are amazing."
"Acknowledged," Jane replied. "We'll try not to stir up the hornets nest more than we have to." She exchanged glances with Turnbow, and Turnbow nodded. They wouldn't be able to remain cloaked for much longer, but hopefully it would be long enough to do what they needed to do.
A full two agonizing minutes passed, every second using up power they couldn't spare before the door to the interrogation room opened, and an Asari in Eclipse commando leathers came walking out, a datapad clutched protectively in her hands. Jane and Turnbow slipped in before the door could close behind her, their grav-packs ensuring that no sound of footfalls gave them away.
Doctor Johnson was lying on his side, staring wildly at the Salarian interrogator. An Asari and another Salarian stood guard. Johnson was restrained, handcuffed behind his back, the handcuffs attached to an exposed pipe where a section of flooring had been removed. "I won't tell you anything," he whispered. "Won't tell… won't…"
"Don't fight it, human," the Salarian said. "Attempting to resist the probe will only damage you. We'll still get what we need. Don't make the same mistake your colleague made." He gestured to where Doctor Ivanova lay insensate against the wall, her eyes wide and staring at nothing. Both doctors looked like they had seen better days, but Ivanova looked worse.
"Go to hell," Doctor Johnson managed. His eyes were bloodshot, and there were dark circles under them. He stank, and so did Doctor Ivanova.
"That's what the female said, human," the Salarian said. "Do you think it will,do you any more good than it did her? I do not wish to see you damaged, but this is your choice, not mine."
Jane focused, slipping into the thoughts of the Asari and Salarian guard, shoving aside their native wills and taking direct control of their nervous systems. Each raised their strange rifles and pointed them at the interrogator. "Disconnect, put the mind probe down, and step away from Doctor Johnson," they both said in perfect unison.
The interrogator froze.
Then the cloaking units ran out of power, and both Shepard and Turnbow became visible in the chamber.
The Salarian interrogator's eyes widened, but if he hesitated, he processed it at the typically advanced Salarian mental speed and was past it before either human had a chance to react. "I told you," Doctor Johnson whispered. "Didn't I say it, Sofie? Didn't I tell you? They came to get us. They came to rescue us."
Sofie Ivanova didn't react. She just stared blankly, eyes unblinking, only the rise and fall of her chest showing that she was even alive.
"I don't think so, human," the Salarian said.
"You don't think so?" Jane asked. "What exactly do you think is going to stop me from forcing you to? Or from having your guards blow your brains out?"
"Basic deduction," the Salarian said. "Prioritized armed combatants. Controlling two at once. Considerable feat, only possible for the strongest human telepaths. Controlling three extremely unlikely. Furthermore, this chamber under observation. Cameras. Sensors. Would detect weapons fire. You can't afford to set off alarms, or you would have fired already."
Damn it. The annoying thing was, he was right. She was pushing to control two at once, and they couldn't afford to fire their guns. Hell, at some point, the people in the security room would get curious why the interrogator had stopped and was watching the wall just outside of the camera's view.
"What do you suggest?" Jane asked.
"Exchange. You wish return of scientists and not to have your presence exposed until you depart ship. I wish to depart this room alive and with the information I have gathered from these sessions. This exchange seems equitable."
"What's your name, Salarian?" Jane asked.
"My name is Jondum Bau," the Salarian said. "You are Commander Shepard. Are my terms agreeable?"
Sofie Ivanova's eyes suddenly gained focus, and she lunged at Jondum Bau like a viper. He was faster. He pivoted, using her force against her, sending her flying in the same direction she had been moving. She hit the far wall with a cry of pain. "Suspected a trick," Jondum said, "Hypothesis confirmed. The female's mind is more resilient than it appeared." For all that, he didn't take his eyes off of Shepard.
Damn it. This was about to turn into a combat mission. "Tali," Shepard said telepathically, "We're about to kick the hornet's nest. Work fast."
Tali's only response was a string of Quarian curses.
"Human," Jondam said, "Are my terms agreeable?"
In answer, Jane shot him in the chest with her laser rifle. It utterly ignored his kinetic barriers, and at this range it would burn through enough of his armor that his chances of survival were equivalent to a coin toss. The Salarian dropped like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
The moment Jane pulled the trigger, Private Turnbow rushed forward and snapped Doctor Johnson's bonds like they were made of tin foil. Doctor Ivanova was already staggering back to her feet, and she took the time to kick the fallen Salarian in the ribs before she turned to her rescuers, took a breath, and then said, "I think I'm ready to leave if it's all the same to you."
The alarms went off a second later, blaring loudly in the room, and blast doors descended, sealing them in the interrogation room. Jane concentrated, forcing the Asari and Salarian guards to turn their weapons on each other and pull the trigger. Her eyes widened when those weapons fired coherent energy beams which burned through their respective barriers with a few seconds of sustained fire, and ended their lives with a few seconds more.
"That was no laser," Jane muttered. "EDI, did you get that?"
"I did," EDI said over the comm. "I believe it to be an advanced particle beam weapon. It was not known that the Citadel races possessed this technology."
"Damn it. We need a way out. EDI, do you have access to the ship's main computer yet?" The room was far too small to allow for them to make their own exit with Turnbow's blaster launcher, and though they might be able to shoot their way out with his heavy plasma rifle, it would take time.
"I'm almost done, Shepard," Tali said, replying for EDI. "Just a few more seconds…"
"I'm switching to active sensors," Shepard said. Radar and ultrasound added their voices to the infrared, visual, and ultraviolet spectrums, filling in data on Shepard's HUD, showing the faint shapes of soldiers moving in the halls outside the room.
"Shepard," EDI said, "I have positioned the microdrones for maximum disruption. Awaiting your order."
Jane let out a breath. "Do it."
In addition to their recon function, each microdrone was filled with a hundred steel balls and a directional explosive charge. It wasn't as useful for killing the enemy as it would have been in the days before kinetic barriers and hardsuits, but kinetic barriers could be overloaded, hardsuits penetrated, and there was nothing quite like a dozen mini-claymores going off all at once to create havoc in a crowded ship's hallway. It was a very expensive mine, but it worked.
Every single microdrone detonated simultaneously, and the roar of it shook the hallway. Immediately afterwards came the cries of the wounded and the dying, though these were far fewer than Jane had hoped for.
"Tali?" Jane asked, her voice filled with tension.
"Done!" Tali announced.
"I am accessing the ship's systems," EDI said. "Lifting security lockdown. Good luck, Shepard."
Shepard took one of the particle beam rifles and clipped it to her belt even as the door unlocked with a distinct thunk. She and Turnbow exchanged glances once more. "Once more unto the breach," Turnbow said, his voice deep and resonant: the sort of well trained voice that a person usually only saw on a stage. That was Shakespeare, wasn't it? And damn but that man had a lovely voice.
Shepard hit the door release, and the Eclipse mercenaries on the other side opened fire, filling the hallway with a hurricane of hypervelocity shots mixed with particle beam fire. There were seven of them, and Shepard threw a plasma grenade even as Turnbow laid down suppressing fire with his heavy plasma rifle, seemingly heedless of the shots that deflected off his kinetic barriers. A particle beam hit him, and he ducked behind cover at the very instant that his kinetic barriers went down.
The grenade detonated, filling the hallway with a sphere of magnetically contained superheated, ionized gas. A Salarian and an Asari commando were instantly killed. Two other Asari fell back from the heat. Three more kept firing.
It was enough of a reduction in force for Jane to justify ducking her head out once more to make telepathic contact with one of the Asari commandos - one with a particle beam rifle. "Let me in," she whispered, her eyes glowing beneath her helmet with purple light.
Lineya. The Asari's name was Lineya, and she was a maiden. She had just signed on with Eclipse. They'd promised her excitement and adventure, and an escape from a humdrum life in a humdrum city on a backwater Asari world. She was quick to laughter, and loved life, and the universe, and she loved her mother, and her Turian father had just died a few years ago, but he had died very proud of her.
Shepard forced her to turn on her fellows, firing an extended blast with her particle beam rifle into the back of the Asari in front of her, and then the next, and the next. Between her and Turnbow, the hallway was soon clear of threats. Then Shepard hit her with a mindfray that temporarily severed her connection with reality. Lineya went instantly catatonic, and dropped to the ground amidst the bodies of those she had killed, and those who had been killed by the microdrones.
A single tear traced its way down the fallen Asari's cheek.
Jane and Turnbow met up with Tali and Sgt. Jones just outside of the crew area. By this point, EDI had gained enough control of the Atesan's systems that she was actively locking security forces behind blast doors to allow for a smoother escape: they encountered no further resistance on their way back to the cargo bay, though several blast doors showed evidence of someone trying to cut through them from the other side.
"Team two," Shepard asked telepathically, "Have you located the MELD shipment?"
"We've got it, Commander," Jacob Taylor replied. "It was in a secure area off the main cargo bay. We had to cut through a high security safe. Nothing too complex."
"Nice work," Shepard replied.
Two minutes later, the Avenger was accelerating away from the Atesan, and just in time: the Atesan flared its plasma torch as it spun around, its weapons and kinetic barriers charging. "We're clear!" Shepard called.
That was when the Normandy opened fire with a full broadside at close range, her plasma and laser weaponry slicing through armor before the kinetic barriers had a chance to come fully online, puncturing into the ship's vulnerable innards and setting off half a dozen decompressions. It fired twice before the Avenger landed safely in the launch bay, the first salvo catching the Atesan amidships, the second blasting into the superstructure around her primary thruster. The Atesan's fusion torch guttered out. Then the Normandy pivoted and accelerated away from the Asari Q-Ship, leaving it to flounder on its approach to the mass relay. The Atesan's return fire came, but uncoordinated, slow, and sloppy; EDI had done a number on their computer systems, and though they scored a few hits here and there, between the Normandy's shields and armor, nothing was inflicted beyond the most superficial damage.
A minute later, the Atesan was out of range. Ten minutes after that, the Normandy vanished into the Relay network.
The after-mission report was a long one. Although they had not been able to maintain stealth, all mission objectives had been accomplished: the MELD was recovered, the scientists were rescued, and the Atesan's logs were successfully uploaded to the Normandy through the connection Tali had made. So it was that four hours after the fact, even as the Normandy made the last comm-pod retrieval, Jane Shepard found herself in the FTL comm-room, making her full report to Central.
The man on the other end of the transmission was impressive. It was impossible to tell his real age, but he was Chinese, with short, cropped white hair and a smoothly shaven, scarred face. He did not have the bearing of a man to be taken lightly, and he looked hauntingly familiar. As Jane finished her report, Central rubbed at his chin, the gesture of a man long accustomed to a beard. "Interesting," he said. "And was your AI able to discover the source of these mercenaries?"
"Not entirely," Jane replied. "They maintained at least that much operational security. We don't know who hired them, but we know who their Fixer is. And more importantly, where their Fixer is."
Central looked thoughtful. "Yes," he said. "Nassana Dantius."
Shepard nodded. "Illium."
"Very well, Commander," Central said. "While I find the involvement of Jondum Bau to be highly suspicious, unless and until such time you and your ship are required for further UFO interceptions, I hereby authorize you to deal with the situation on Ilium however you see fit."
"Why is Jondum Bau's involvement suspicious?" Shepard asked.
"Because he is on our list of suspected Council Spectres," Central replied. "It is most unfortunate that you did not make absolutely certain that he was dead." His lips thinned. "I believe you are walking into a trap, though whether it is a trap for you or for Ms. Dantius remains to be seen."
Jane raised an eyebrow. "If this is a trap, why walk into it at all?"
"Commander," Central said, sounding aggrieved. "Someone went to considerable trouble to arrange this invitation. To ignore it now would be most impolite. You will spring this trap, and when you do, its jaws will shatter upon your counterstroke. Am I understood?"
Jane nodded, and the sense of familiarity with the man grew. His name was on the tip of her tongue. She could almost... "I get it, Shaojie," she said. "I won't disappoint you."
Central's eyes narrowed, and Jane realized suddenly that she had just called the man by his real name: a real name she had no way to know. There was a terrible moment where she had no idea what he was going to do. Then he just moved on, treating it like it had never happened. "I am aware that you intend to recruit your former lover as you have recruited the Quarian," he said. "I have no objection."
Jane actually looked surprised at that. "Really?" she asked.
"It may surprise you to know that XCOM has but one governing philosophy, Commander, and it has nothing to do with any kind of inherent human superiority: whatever it takes to win. We aren't here to make friends, but if making friends is what it takes to win, then that it what we will do. Vigilo. Confido. Central out." The transmission ended.
When Jane Shepard returned to the bridge, she ordered that a course be set for Illium.
END CHAPTER 04
Codex: The Birth of the Alliance
After the First Contact War and the international conflicts which followed, Earth was in dire straits. With severe environmental damage caused by both the First Contact War and the wars that followed between nations on Earth now armed with advanced laser weaponry and armor and equipment that utterly outclassed anything seen before in human history short of nuclear weapons, the human race faced a very real chance of extinction.
Furthermore, the introduction of widespread nanotechnology derived from but strictly inferior to MELD itself proved to be a major source of conflict, in no small part because of its incidental perfection of contraceptive technology: with both men and women now directly able to control their own fertility, it was no longer possible to have children without intending to have children. And once scientists worked out how to reproduce MELD, even more radical changes would be on their way; Another source of cultural conflict came when it was demonstrated in an experimental setting that with MELD, body modifications of all kinds would be cheap and easy, and just as easily reversed, up to and including complete biological sex changes. But even beyond that, there would be gene-treatments that could give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, treatments which could allow the regrowth of lost limbs, to regenerate damaged nerves, and even a cure for aging.
The Faithful had always dreamed of a day when their god would make the blind to see, the lame to walk, the deaf to hear, and when these things were done before their very eyes by the ingenuity of human science, the reactionary and the regressive called it blasphemy; other religious leaders said that a child could imitate his father without thought of mockery, but because he was his father's son. But many refused to embrace the new technologies, and so were quickly left behind by a rapidly changing world. Many spoke of the coming judgment: The Second Coming, and the end of all things. Some actually sought to bring that end about.
With the Earth becoming more and more a hellhole, its ecology hopelessly ruined, in places still infested with Chryssalids, and generally unable to support the human population and its people waging war and holy war and culture war, up to and including nuclear exchanges between India and Pakistan, Iran and Israel, North Korea and China (the DKP had actually intended to target Japan, but something went wrong with the targeting systems), it became increasingly clear that if humanity was going to have a future, it was going to have to be away from Earth.
So began the single largest, most complicated, and most dangerous period of human migration in the history of the species. There were a thousand potential failure points, a thousand ways the migration could have resulted in simple extinction. Against all odds, the efforts of the XCOM Funding Nations met instead with hardscrabble success after success. What began as one of two scientific Martian colonies jointly run by XCOM and the Council Nations soon became a new frontier for immigration, drawn onwards by the promise of a better life, of a world with the possibility for more than an ugly, early death. With a few tragic exceptions, only those who were unwilling to be a part of the migration were left behind. It only started with Mars; once the process of producing Elerium was discovered and the use of the alien hyperdrive became economical, the diaspora began in earnest; eager to escape the now stifling, poisonous cradle, mankind spread to the stars.
Earth was, for a time, left to the minority who could not accept this new world or who simply would not leave the homeworld behind. But despite their refusal, the benefits of the reverse-engineered alien technologies spilled over even to those who refused to embrace them: they could have anything they wanted, except relevance. Further generations were given the same choice as their parents, and over the course of a hundred and thirty three years, the irrelevant minority dwindled into effective nonexistence: some were unable to overcome the old ethnic hatreds and wiped each other out; some died to the increasingly unfriendly environment; some decided to leave the Earth after all a generation or two down the road; and a very few groups, the Amish among them, simply endured, living as they always had, surviving through cooperation, community, and a sheer, stubborn refusal to give up. Earth has only recently started to be re-settled.
In time, a new, united government was established: An Alliance of the various human systems and interests, its worlds settled by the coalitions and combined governments that survived the aftershock wars: United Canadian and American States, the Euro-Syndicate, the former Arabian Bloc - now the United Islamic Nations - the Egyptian Cartel, Africa Corp, the Brazilian Union, Aztlan, the Indonesian Consortium, Scandinavia, Neo-Japan, Free China, the Australian Union, The Korean Federation, Eurasia, and the Icelandic Union. In honor of the homeworld, it was called the Earth Systems Alliance. And its capital world was Mars.
Author's note: I have revised the chapter, 'First Shanxi' to better account for the capabilities of the Mass Effect ships. ME ships should have maneuverability and acceleration superior to the Alliance ships (albeit subject to heat and reaction mass limitations that the Alliance ships do not have) on account of the ability to reduce their mass.