I do not own GW or any of its copyrights. So suck it GW.
AN: Hi readers. Thanks for coming to check this out; wanted to say thanks and if you do like this. Please review and let us know if it's any good or not. This is a rewrite of older work that I and Co-an have decided to try and rewrite and change a few things that we weren't happy with looking at it now. We decided to just write for fun and practice, namely for our own entertainment.
Also would like to thank Jazanav, our beta and new assistant co-writer. You guys wouldn't have this if he hadn't egged us on it.
It was a desolate, barren star system they had found themselves in, a journey of little interest for those who held vast dominions and territories. A sole orange star at its center, its hot gaze illuminating the lonely dark, and two much smaller satellites orbited around its axis on an eternal chase. These worlds were obviously desolate: unable to sustain even the simplest of life and as its surface was baked and burned countless times over. The star scorching the earth into a near-molten state at the worst of times, its sands long turned to blackened glass, and its atmosphere long-dead.
Yet, despite its inhospitable state, it was a life-string for some. The surface, though untenable to life, held a secret: a vast bounty of resources, so close that one could easily suck it up through a straw if enough effort to survive and access to it had been given.
And only the most desperate would've tried such a thing. Many have. All failed. Those who managed to get to its riches found that the costs quickly outweighed the benefits of such operations. Those who could shoulder such costs found the system too isolated, too dangerous to continue such a venture as others preyed on them, and thus they ignored it for more fruitful, safe gains.
The Quarian Migrant Fleet had none of the choices and all the desperation.
They were in a situation that brokered no dissent, no risk too great, and no danger too hazardous when the opportunity to bolster their dwindling reserves showed itself. Measures had been taken, various forms of ship-borne and heat-proof protection installed and double-checked, and vast flotillas of transports and armies of machinery and bodies prepped for the surface excursion. The entire species, as a whole, rallied as a sole machine, its cogs churning and grinding.
It would be here, on the system of Kostionos at the Outer Rims of the Terminus, that the Migrant Fleet would moor, if only for a scant amount of time, as its hive of ships stripped the planet bare like a swarm of bees.
These worlds would buy the fleet precious time.
However, the Terminus was anything but safe, especially in the uninhabited, rural regions. An unforgiving place for those who would neglect to keep a watchful eye, and an armed ship or two, out against those that dwell within: Pirates, slavers, and criminals, all an ever constant and imposing threat.
To avert the possibility of danger and any chance at the extinction of the last remnant of their species, the quarians took many measures. One such measure was the Volunteer crews, vessels willing to brave the edges of the Migrant Fleet and nearby systems, forming the first line of defence and the ones who would use their lives in their duty of service for the whole.
The other most important measure taken was the scouting crews.
They were the first to enter the system, to quantify apparent dangers and the riches lying hidden beneath the crust of observable celestial bodies. First to die amid the dangers of Terminus too, without fault. It was, nonetheless, a death borne with prideful hearts and willing souls: venturing firstly into the unknown.
A sad necessity, especially when there were only so many left.
Juh'Shaaram nar Yeepan vas Odir wondered was why the chaos didn't start yet. It wasn't that she was actively seeking danger, but during every expedition she was a part of, bad things happened. Once, an engine broke after performing a relay jump. There was this time that they encountered a krogan warband that managed to board the ship. A fire erupted in the cafeteria, and it just so happened that the fire suppression malfunctioned. Many missions with many mishaps, all of which she happened to be nearby. If anything, she believed she was cursed by the Ancestors.
Now it was quiet.
Too quiet.
She clenched the armrest of her seat, the worn synthetic leather crinkled under her three-fingered hands. Her eyes darted to and fro amongst an array of screens of the Odir once again, each one displaying a continuous stream of information fed from over a dozen sensors. The numbers. The information. They all seemed so… mundane and tedious now. And yet Juh could not help but feel ill instead of at ease.
There was always something that needed to be done: a loose pipe, a sparking wire, a burnt circuit or even a slightly hinged vent. The ship was, in other words, in perfect shape, despite its age and history.
And once again, Nothing was wrong. Nothing was off.
"Hey, snap out of it."
That sentence ripped her back to reality. In front of her was the long-range sensor suite display. She looked to the left, at her partner, who was manning the short-range sensor net display.
Fult'Maell vas Lema looked back, her red-tinted visor showing a stern visage. "You're our first set of eyes and ears. We can't notice anyone approaching if you yourself don't notice, especially now."
Juh sheepishly turned back to her display, blinking to ready and stare hard at her screen, almost demanding the thing to show her something of note.
Then the screen flickered, then it died in front of her eyes.
Ah, there it was, the ever-present minor inconvenience she was used to. It was a relief, to be frank, the familiarity of such being comforting, ever-reliable and present. So used to things always going wrong around her, not a great mindset, but… she was cursed, after all. It'd be more suspicious if everything went right.
She flicked the power switch a few times to no avail and sighed. It was obvious. The holoprojector was as dead as it could possibly be, no amount of flicking would work.
"Sorry, I think something got fried down there." She announced to Fult, who gave a knowing nod, as Juh rerouted the data-stream from her station to the comms-officer's console along with a notice, as they're qualified to take over. Then she kneeled before the console and popped the panel off.
First things first, check the power headers. If there's anything wrong with them, it's ETO's problem, not her. If not, she can perform a quick repair by simply grabbing a spare projector unit. Not a big deal, more of an inconvenience.
Omnitool out, multimeter mode on and leads in the hands, Juh started testing the power connectors for signs of life.
«Huh, what do you know, there's absolutely nothing wrong with them so far. Now for the DSP PWR… Hmm, also ok, then why did the display turn off. Wait, ok? I didn't even unplug it...»
At this point, Juh started having chills down there. How would the display power header be disconnected if she was using said display perfectly fine just a minute ago? No one could have possibly accessed the console, unlatched the fixator and pulled it out while she wasn't looking— and the panel being directly beneath her. Unable and unwilling to resolve this paradox, she slotted the connector back in.
With a click, the Odir lost power.
All power. Lights, the neighbouring equipment, even the engines and life-support whined to silence as new sounds took their place. Shouts rang out with alarm and surprise. Swears uttered shortly after in multiple dialects and orders rang out on the small bridge like a hive of activity. And like the unofficial saying amongst all quarians goes: When the engines go kaput, you do not stay put.
And when everything is bathed in sheer darkness in the depths of space, the only illumination from bright omni-tools and suit lights. It does little to give one a sense of security.
"... huh, that's new," Fult looked around, witnessing the pandemonium from her dead terminal. Looking down beside her as Juh emerged from her position, a sigh left her lips and a quirked eye rose as one plus one added up in her mind.
"I assume this was you, Juh?"
"What? No! There was a loose wire and I—"
"So it was?"
"Like this tiny terminal could short-circuit the entire ship!" Juh huffed. It was weird, one wire shouldn't be able to do all of this. Let alone on this model of refurbished set-up, an obsolete but functional—supposedly—piece of turian manufacture. All that should have happened was a blown fuse at worst, a working display at best. Her console wasn't even on the main bridge circuit.
And yet, Odir was an old ship, a very old one, commissioned even before the exodus of her species. It was a miracle it was still space-borne, even after the very invasive retrofit of a new power subsystem a decade ago. It wouldn't be wrong to say the only turian part left on Odir was the hull. Perhaps the engineers took a very nasty shortcut somewhere...
Then Juh realized one thing. Where were the emergency lights, why weren't they activating? They weren't even connected to the main circuit, existing on an entirely separate one. There was little to no reason they shouldn't be working; anything that had to do with an emergency had a priority on any good quarians list.
She doubted that engineering would skimp on that of all things, not wanting to be in their position whe—
"What do you mean everything is gone?"
Her ponderings were shattered amidst the tense whisper of someone near her, or rather to be more specific, her captain. His tool illuminated his form in the dark, hunched over his seat with his free hand resting on his chin. Frustration just oozing from the man to the ignorance of the bridge.
Captain Chu'van vas Odir, captain of the Odir, was addressing what Juh most likely assumed to be the head of Engineering over his omni-tool. The poor man's protests were most muffled by the sounds of pandemonium from his end and the growing, harsh tones of the captains simmering voice.
She did not know much of the man personally, but in her brief time aboard she learned of the crew's opinion of him, that he was a hardcore traditionalist, in both discipline and nature. A turian born in a quarian's body, someone joked to her at dinner once, ironic given the ship's origin.
She also recalled that he was supposed to have a composed demeanour. She wasn't seeing it.
"Switch us to the reserve power; check the back-ups again. This is impossible. There should be a fair amount of inertia left in the generators too. Nothing goes cold this fast; energy doesn't just disappear. It doesn't die."
A voice spoke up. It was frantic, almost maddened and frustrated. Juh wasn't able to hear it all, and she doubted anyone else did so either seeing as she was the closest, but the gist was clear as they both bickered.
They couldn't find the cause or even a solution. A fact that left grim scenarios floating in her mind: the facts of ships dying; their crews suffocating on the lack of air or freezing to death.
It was not a fate she wished on anyone. Well, most people.
And, as if trying to banish the thought from her head, then Captain Chu'van spoke up. He sounded confident now, nonchalant even, in his bearings and posture on that worn-out chair like a lord giving a cursory glance to his retinue.
"It seems that the back-up systems are experiencing some difficulties. No matter, the head engineer has assured me that the problems would be remedied shortly. It is just a fault with the wirings, perhaps something has worn away. A small fix, they say, but I shall talk with them thoroughly about this later regarding such serious problems." He looked towards Juh's direction, her heart jumped as she felt the man's glowing eyes facing her, "Fult?"
"Yes, captain," Fult answered.
"Assign someone to assemble the portable lights from the storage hold and do a follow-up with the rest of the crew and personnel; make sure everyone is accounted for and safe. I want a situation report from every station besides engineering. I will be dealing with them personally." Then Chu'van turned his gaze around him, "Everyone else, I expect you to stay at your stations until this has been resolved. We have contingencies and this is not our first fight with such things."
Chu'van then focused on his omni-tool, ignoring Fult's response, typing quickly on it with almost lighting speed. To whom it was for, it was obvious to Juh and everyone watching.
No one said anything.
Soon, the darkness was illuminated only by talking mouthpieces, glowing eyes, and what portable lights could be scrounged. Everyone worked in silence or tried too. Then as if a veil had been lifted, the light had returned as everything came back online. The displays, the engine with its subtle hum, and, not to Juh's surprise, even her display flickered to life once more.
She wanted to give it a dirty look, but someone giving her one dissuaded her.
"Looks like the issue has been fixed," Chu'van said with audible relief.
"We have an incoming message from the Reela: They are inquiring if we've been experiencing strange power issues," A quarian spoke up from his station.
"Respond to them in the affirmative…"
Juh tuned the captain out. She was no longer needed and resolved to fiddle with her console for anything wrong with it in the meantime. Who knew what miscalibrations happened because of the black-out or what was she could've missed.
Everything seemed fine at first: The sensors were well-calibrated and there was nothing wrong with the data; both incoming and out-going streams. And nothing was seen on the external cameras either, though she would be more worried if something was unaccounted for by the sensors within visual range. It was more of a symbolic check if anything. Then she noticed something was wrong with nothing itself. There was nothing. This section of space, and like all others, had a rich background of stars surrounding them like a tapestry of speckled, glittering sand. But now? It was absent, a void that was shown as only a gaping hole of pitch darkness among the vivid backdrop. Small at first, it grew like a beating, tumorous heart.
The void breathed— if she had any way to describe it.
Juh hastily glanced once more at the sensor net; the once-steady stream of mundane information at her fingertips changed drastically. It glitched with physically improbable and straight-up out-of-range values, fluttering between proper data-formats and corrupted, broken code. The holographic display began strobing, her photochromic visor barely keeping up. Ghostly whispers permeated the room with such incoherent yet clear words, and she was mighty unsure whether it came from those around her.
"What's going on? This better not be a prank, or you'll regret this!" Chu'van's bark brimmed with confusion and outrage.
Juh made to inform Chu'van of her discovery as he looked agape with the strange on-going phenomenon.
The words tumbled into a graceless gasp at the sight coming into view. Her sound drew others nearby to her, captain included, and they too gaped at what they were seeing.
"... Put that on screen," the captain ordered. She complied, and her display disappeared to come alive again as a projection big enough for the whole bridge to watch.
They didn't know what they were looking at, not at first. But they could feel it in their soul, like the subtle, tingling of a foul taint that clung to their being with molasses speed.
They watched the void quiver as a crack broke wide in the void: a fighter-sized chasm that spanned and bled colour like spilled paint into a gigantic, jagged hole. Pinpricks and flashes of screaming light winked into existence, coalescing into pulsing, crackling tendrils of sickly, byzantine lightning.
They felt bile rising up, a fighting knot of disgust and nausea, once it finally burst open wide with a flash of radiance of indescribable nature. A wound that ruptured the veil of reality and space, the illumination that burned in the darkness and blotted out stars with its presence.
Juh would never admit it, not to anyone, but she swore to the ancestors that she'd seen a face winking at her within it. Its lips parting wide with a feral smile and an unending jaw. She blinked and it was gone.
And then they saw it.
"Keelah…" someone whispered.
From within the maelstrom of unfathomable nature, a shape forced its way out before the maw shrivelled and then sealed. Ribbons and strings of colour and reality clung to it before it burned away to nothing on its golden prow and cold hull.
Then… it stayed still, hanging in front of them like an imposing mountain.
The anomalous events died down to nothing as if it had never happened at all. But, no one watching paid any mind, instead, they focused on the thing.
It was obvious to anyone that this was a ship. Though the question was... whose?
Juh knew that the biggest ships she'd ever seen were the liveships of the fleet: massive spherical constructs of pre-migration quarian engineering—the pinnacle of naval science at the time—that now fed what remained of the species, growing and processing tonnes upon tonnes of foodstuff. It was a city, almost, the ship being manned by the thousands. It was the lifeline and the sole pillars of quarian society and survival; only an idiot would deny that.
This ship was much longer, bigger. It
"By the Ancestors…" Fult uttered what was on everyone's mind.