The Sleeping Casket (Halo/ME2) Crossover

[Night_stalker]

A/N: I do not own ME2, thought I do own a copy of ME 2 Collector’s Edition, nor do I own the Halo franchise. Bioware owns ME, and Bungie owns Halo, all rights except OC’s belong to them. This contains violence, language, spoilers for both MEs and Halo 3, and pop culture references.
Note this fic has Male Shep, Infiltrator, Renegade

Omega Station, Sahrabarik, Omega Nebula

Former Lt. Commander Kurt Shepard was not in a good mood. He had just arrived at Omega to finally hunt down Samara’s twisted daughter, when Yeoman Kelly told him that the Illusive Man once again wanted to talk to him. Though it was annoying to speak to him, he was a lot more civil than the Council ever was. He walked into the Comm room, and stepped onto the quantum entanglement equipment. The scanner engaged and scanned over his body, and making a digital copy of him right in front of the Illusive Man, and Sheppard took a good look at him. The Illusive Man’s mood was, as usual impossible to discern.
He spoke, his usual nondescript voice sounding almost excited “Shepard, I hate to pull you away from your mission to stop the Collectors, but we’ve encountered an anomaly that I thought you might like to investigate. One of our survey ships was stopped to make a drive discharge, and made a shocking discovery. There’s a derelict ship drifting out in the Grissom system, dating back at least 50,000 years. It could be Prothean, but we can’t be certain. The vessel was forced to leave, as it was on a tight schedule to make a delivery to a cell. I want you to examine the vessel, and see what can be salvaged, and if it even is Prothean.”
Shepard replied” I understand, but why so urgent? Surely a battered old hulk can wait a couple of days, can’t it?”

The Illusive Man said” Not when a Collector vessel has been detected on an intercept path with the hulk. I estimate it will be there within 22 hours. That means you have 10 hours to get there, see what’s salvage-worthy, salvage what can be salvaged, and destroy the wreckage before the Collectors can board it.”
Shepard nodded, and turned and walked off the board, ending the transmission. He opened the Comm room’s door, and walked out, and then he turned to the left and walked through the armory, cutting through there to enter the CIC. He approached the Galaxy map, and laid in a course for the Grissom System, where hopefully he would get some answers to the questions that were flowing through his head.

2 Hours later, Grissom System, Forward Unto Dawn, Cryogenic chamber

Cortana had been monitoring the Dawn’s mangled sensor section for the past few years, and had seen nothing that would be of use. However, she had noticed when an unknown space vessel dropped in system, and immediately decided to thaw out John. She knew that if they had hostile intent, she needed someone who could actually fight, and plus she need to talk to him again, at least before she was forced to be shut down. Unfortunately, the cryo-tube was too short on power for a safe defrost, so she was just going to have to rig it for transfer, hopefully the newcomers had a source of power that could be used to bring him back.
She had finally come to the near end of her lifespan, and wanted to talk to him at least before she died. Reading the tube for transfer took a half-hour, during which time the unknown vessel came closer, and Cortana was able to examine it more closely.
It wasn’t a big vessel, measuring about 200 meters long and equipped with 4 long engines that used an unknown energy source. She also noticed the odd energy readings from the ship’s rear, but the readings suggested that the reactor was located there, or something that generated a lot of power. She was having some difficulty picking up the ship on sensors, but it was easily seen visually. The ship was equipped with shields that were similar to Covenant shielding technology, but seemed weaker than the Covenant’s shields. The ship seemed to be equipped with interesting weapons, but the primary weapon appeared to be a mass accelerator that fired a much smaller slug than the MAC guns the UNSC used.
The unknown vessel was now hanging in place off the rear of the ship, and she noticed a shuttle leaving the unknown vessel’s hanger. She heard a hissing emanating from the cryo-tube, and began compressing herself onto her data chip, readying herself for transfer if need be.

So, what do you thinkg?

[The Vortex Empire]

This thing's been drifting for 50,000 years? Cortana's life span is 7 years.

[Xess]

This thing's been drifting for 50,000 years? Cortana's life span is 7 years.

For the sake of the story it'd probably be best to say that dicking around Forerunner computers let her alter herself so she can survive long term.

[Aceraptor]

Night Stalker, that bit about the Normandy's shields being more powerful then Covenant... is that Cortana making a mistake or are you setting the story as the SA and general MEverse tech being more powerful then Haloverse? Because in MEverse a Dreadnaught's main cannon is 38 kilotonnes tnt per round.

The shields would also be completely different since the Cov. shields stop both energy and kinetic weapons. As well as not allowing anything in or out. So the Cov ships lower shields to fire the weapons and snap the shield back on again. While the MEverse kinetic shields seem to let things out, but not in.

The Halo Encyclopedia (though admittedly seem like a rush job) sets UNSC MAC cannons to be firing 600 ton rounds at 120,000 km per second speed which equates to over a teraton of tnt.

Thats the high end I admit. But the more resonable would be at megatons to low gigatons.

And Covenant shields can handle the rounds that the UNSC uses (though not the super MACs which hurl 3000 ton rounds at 50% the speed of light.)

Though, this IS your story so you can choose to do whatever.

[Vehrec]

Did either of you two read that? She's only experienced a few years, either through relativistic time dilation dickery or forerunner time dickery.

[Night_stalker]

Night Stalker, that bit about the Normandy's shields being more powerful then Covenant... is that Cortana making a mistake or are you setting the story as the SA and general MEverse tech being more powerful then Haloverse? Because in MEverse a Dreadnaught's main cannon is 38 kilotonnes tnt per round.

The shields would also be completely different since the Cov. shields stop both energy and kinetic weapons. As well as not allowing anything in or out. So the Cov ships lower shields to fire the weapons and snap the shield back on again. While the MEverse kinetic shields seem to let things out, but not in.

The Halo Encyclopedia (though admittedly seem like a rush job) sets UNSC MAC cannons to be firing 600 ton rounds at 120,000 km per second speed which equates to over a teraton of tnt.

Thats the high end I admit. But the more resonable would be at megatons to low gigatons.

And Covenant shields can handle the rounds that the UNSC uses (though not the super MACs which hurl 3000 ton rounds at 50% the speed of light.)

Though, this IS your story so you can choose to do whatever.

Thanks for bringing that up, the error has now been edited, and don't worry, I know that error won't be poping up again.

[Aceraptor]

Thanks for bringing that up, the error has now been edited, and don't worry, I know that error won't be poping up again.

No problem, any time. Though halopedia is a good resource to look up stuff at, you should check the sources as well.

[Night_stalker]

Here is chapter 2

A/N: I do not own ME2, nor do I own Halo. All rights belong to their respective owners, and thanks for all the reviews I’ve gotten. Watch out: here are spoilers for ME2 and Halo 3, violence, language, and black humor.
1- Chief will not be as strong as before simply because his shields aren’t made with mini MAC guns in mind. To quote the ME Wiki” Mass Effect infantry weapons use mass accelerator technology. The guns shave a bullet the size of a grain of sand off a dense block of metal stored in the gun, decrease it’s mass with a mass effect field, and fire the projectile at supersonic velocities.” Normal bullets aren’t that fast or powerful.
2- He will be tired, mainly due to his nearly nonstop fighting. Look, any solider is tough, but even SPARTAN’s have limits, and Chief has been through 27 years of nearly non-stop combat, only really resting in cryo-sleep.
3- I might feature events from Ghosts of Oynx, I haven’t decided yet.
4- I won’t have the events in Halo be the past for ME, it’s just too complicated. I might have the Forerunners play a part yet; it’s still up in the air.

Cerberus UT-47 Kodiak Shuttle, on approach to unknown vessel.

Shepard reviewed what EDI’s scanners had detected about the unknown vessel on a datapad. The hulk was approximately 276 meters long, and apparently had been sliced in half, judging by the massive slice through the rear of the ship. The reactor onboard the vessel was still providing a trickle of power, and it was all being diverted to one room, where a single life sign was detected. Shepard didn’t know what was more amazing, the fact that the reactor was still working after over 50,000 years, or the fact that something was alive after 50,000 years. He looked from the datapad at the boarding party he had brought along. He had decided to bring Jacob and Legion. Legion would be the technical expert, while he and Jacob could be the muscle to back him up.

The shuttle jolted, and he heard a clang, even through the Death Mask’s thick protective layers. The outer hatch then opened, and he climbed out, Predator heavy pistol at the ready. The hanger was mostly empty, but at the far end, a small console was standing, and a few feet away from that a doorway gaped. Shepard made a quick gesture, and the rest of his squad fanned out, approaching the doorway.

They burst through the door, scanning the room with their weapons carefully. The room was about 8 feet long by 14 feet with tubes placed at regular intervals along both walls. Only one of the tubes seemed active, judging by the condensation on the glass cover of the tube. Legion moved towards a free-standing terminal by the active pod, while he and Jacob moved to cover him. Legion activated his omni-tool and began accessing the systems. Shepard slowly approached the tube, and began rubbing the condensation off the tube, and stared in shock at what was inside. Inside, a green figure, with a yellow face was lying there, motionless. The figure had to be at least 7 feet tall, and was humanoid, but any other details were obscured.

At that moment Legion spoke up” Shepard Commander, we have managed to access the cryotube’s primary controls. The tube is nearly spent, and within 15 minutes, the tube’s power supply will run out. The resulting defrost will prove to be fatal to the occupant, unless we manage to get it hooked up to a proper power source.”

Shepard nodded, and pressed his hand to the side of his helmet, and contacted Joker. They were going to need to work fast, but he felt that they could gain a lot from this one survivor. As the engineering team he requested shuttled over, Shepard and his team began exploring the rest of the ship. The ship appeared to be deserted, with not a soul onboard, save the lone occupant found in the cryotube. No one noticed as Legion walked over to the pedestal where Cortana’s chip was located, and grabbed the datachip out of the socket. He then returned to his duties, the chip hidden safely on his person, until he could get back to the Normandy, and communicate with his discovery.

The ship was very tightly locked down, with blast doors having been dropped over almost every door. The doors were some form of titanium derivative, which naturally meant that to open a door; he either had to take an omni-tool and bypass the door locks, which was a difficult task, seeing how they appeared to be heavily encoded against such intrusions. The other option was to try and blow the doors off, or he could try and find the manual overrides. So far, he was forced to blow the doors down mostly, as he could see no override levels or switches anywhere. He was running low on ammunition for his M-100 grenade launcher and the ship seemed to stretch on and on. He was slowly wandering through a corridor that seemed to be made out of the same light brown metal that everything else was made out of.
The most shocking discovery though, was that all the signs and writing on the walls was in English! How was English, which wasn’t even invented until the time of the Roman Empire present on a 50,000 year old space vessel? One thing was for sure though, it wasn’t a Prothean vessel. Protheans spoke an entirely different language, or at least that was what those who had studied Prothean ruins found. The ship was massive, with crew quarters taking up an entire deck, and the reactor was a new kind. Apparently it was a Deuterium nuclear fusion reactor and it generated an enormous amount of power, at least when it was up to full power. Currently it appeared to be running at a mere fraction of its total capacity, but yet the entire ship appeared to be powered, but few systems were working.

Unfortunately, the mission was on a time-table so he wasn’t allowed as long as he would’ve liked to search the hulk. As a result, once he found the cargo hold, he began having it stripped of all its cargo containers and having them transferred over to the Normandy. He could have them searched when he had time to do so, namely not when he was docked with the hulk. He supervised the transfer of several large cargo containers, each weighing in at several tons. In fact, one of them weighed a whopping 66 metric tons! What the hell was in theses containers, drive cores? He sighed, and watched as the last of the mechs carried the heavy container over to the shuttle. The engineers were puzzled as to how they could have the containers transported over, given the immense size and weight of the containers. Eventually, Engineer Donnelly managed to come up with a solution that was simple. A cable would attach the container to the shuttle, via a hook implanted at the stern, between the two rear thrusters.

Citadel, Serpent Nebula, Dock 422

Operations Chief Ashley Williams was not looking forward to her next assignment. The Alliance, upon hearing that she still had feelings for Shepard, decided that they needed some form of mole inside of Cerberus. Her connection with Shepard was deemed useful, and she was assigned to be the Alliance liaison with Shepard. Councilor Anderson had already sent a message to Shepard, requesting a meeting on the Citadel to institute the transfer. She didn’t want to betray Shepard like this, but felt she had little other option. Her career was pretty much her life now, and she wasn’t giving it up that easily.
Now she was waiting, with her suitcase packed and her gear sorted. The old soldiers axiom” Hurry up and wait” ran through her mind as she waited. Her helmet’s combead chirped, and an anonymous voice told her that the Normandy was coming in for docking. She turned her head, and saw the ship approaching the docking cradle. It was bigger than the original, and she supposed that it looked sleeker than the original, but she still missed the old Normandy. The ship came to a halt, and the docking arm extended, and mated with the airlock.
She picked up her bag, and walked slowly towards the airlock. As the door opened, she stepped inside and looked around in wonder. The ship was a nearly identical copy of the original Normandy, on both the inside and outside! How much credit did Cerberus even have anyway? She heard a familiar voice say” Hey, Ashley!” and she turned to her left and saw, to her astonishment Joker!
She said, in a stunned voice” Joker? You’re with Cerberus too?” he nodded, and said” They were the only ones to give me flight clearance, since the Alliance grounded me. They made me an offer, that “he spread his arms around, showing off the ship” was too attractive to ignore.” At that moment, Shepard walked onto the flight deck, and said” Ash? So this is who the Alliance wanted as a liaison with us.” He held out his hand, and Ashley shook it. She felt a flutter in her heart, as she looked into his eyes. Even after two years, she still had very strong feelings for him.

Medical Lab, Deck 3, Normandy SR-2

Doctor Chakwas had seen a lot in her career as a doctor. She had served through the Blitz, the liberation of Shanxi, the Battle of the Citadel, and several other major battles. She had seen almost everything that could physically happen to a human and she believed that nothing would surprise her. Looking at the medical scans of the subject lying on the medical bed in front of her however, she was shocked at the level of modification that had been given to it.

The bones appeared to have been bonded with a carbide ceramic substance; the eyes appeared to have been modified to see in near total darkness, the thyroid was modified to give out extra HGH hormone, and the subject’s nervous system appeared to have been boosted 300% in terms of speed. Not even the Alliance’s standard infantrymen’s package, which all Alliance soldiers got when they entered the service, went that far, though they did come close at times.
The most shocking piece of news was that, underneath the nearly half-ton armor the subject was… No, she checked, and reran the genetic tests. There had to be a mistake, there was no way that subject was what the tests said it was. She looked at the most recent test results, and gaped at them. She had to tell the Commander about this immediately!
She rushed from the lab, the results still on the datapad she was holding in her right hand. She ran into the elevator, where she hammered on the up button. Slowly, the elevator shifted upwards. To kill some time, she rechecked the report.
In big block letters it read SUBJECT SPECIES: HUMAN. RESULTS 99.864864865476 % ACCURATE.

[The Vortex Empire]

The cargo crate was 66 tons? That must be a Scorpion tank. but I don't see one of those being useful in the MEverse. Slow, a big target, and vulnerable to effective air support.

[von Neufeld]

A good start. However I see two issues:
- Scene switches are a bit jarring and doesn't flow naturally. I would recommend at least one scene dealing with returning from the hulk.
- Timing the saving of the Master Chief down to 15min before it's too late is not believable, and you do not even use the potential drama of having the crew struggle to save him. So either add drama or make the timing a more believable few months or few years.

[Night_stalker]

The cargo crate was 66 tons? That must be a Scorpion tank. but I don't see one of those being useful in the MEverse. Slow, a big target, and vulnerable to effective air support.

As it is originally yes it isn't suited for ME 'verse combat. Modified on the other hand, it should be interesting to see in combat.

[Night_stalker]

A/N: thanks for the wonderful reviews. I don’t own either Mass Effect or Halo, and Watch out: here are spoilers for ME2 and Halo 3, violence, language, and black humor. There will be an Ash/Male Shepard relationship, along with a possibility that I am considering. For timeline purposes, after they got the Reaper IFF, but before it springs its Trojan horse onto the Normandy’s systems.

Comm Room, SR-2 Normandy, 1630 Hours

Shepard had called a briefing to discuss the human they had discovered in the remains of the hulk. He was there, along with Doctor Chakwas, Ash, Legion, Mordin, and Tali. Dr. Chakwas started off the meeting by stating that:” The creature down in the med-lab is human, but appears to be genetically different in several ways. It’s almost as if a case of genetic isolation has occurred. However, he isn’t from Earth or any known colonies. In addition, he is heavily genetically modified. In fact, he seems to be strong and fast enough to take on a Krogan in close combat, and actually stand a chance of winning!” that set the crew muttering amongst themselves in shock, as taking a Krogan on in CQB was tantamount to suicide unless you were another Krogan, or were armed.

Ash’s face was puzzled, due to her not even hearing about the creature, but then Shepard handed over a datapad with the necessary info, and she took it gratefully, and began pouring over the contents. While she did so, Shepard said” Though it appears human, the technology is vastly different from what we use. The armor it’s wearing doesn’t seem to use any Mass Effect fields, Element Zero, or any of the alloys that we discovered on Mars. However, it appears to be heavy armor in terms of shield strength and protection offered. It does seem to be primarily designed for enhancing the strength and speed of the user considerably.

However, unlike our armor, it’s is made of an incredibly strong yet unknown alloy, which when combined with its enhancing properties, makes the wearer nearly invincible. In short, it isn’t a lost colony sending out a scout vessel, so it could be a First Contact situation. However, the fact that it’s a human male complicates matters significantly.”

Tali spoke up” It’s not a Mech? Keelah preserve us, he’s the size of a Krogan, and you’re telling me it’s human?! What the-“she began to say, but EDI cut in, saying “Commander Shepard, the creature’s vitals appear to have spiked, and it is moving his head around. Its armor appears to have been powered up, and the readings are quite powerful.”

Shepard nodded, and said” OK, EDI. Ash, Doctor Chakwas, and I will be coming down shortly to greet our guest. It’s time we got some answers.”

Unknown location, unknown time, unknown date

Chief awoke, opening his eyes, only to see the inside of the MJOLNIR’s helmet. Dimly, he remembered the MJOLNIR would automatically enter sleep mode if the wearer entered cryogenic slumber. As a result, he now had to cold-start his suit’s reactor, a process which took several minutes. The HUD flickered to life slowly, the onboard calibration software sending its usual lines of small blue squares across the inside of the visor. The shield bar at the top of the HUD began slowly filling. Chief felt like an incredible weight was on his chest and he looked down at the rest of his body.

To his surprise, he was not in the cryotube, but was instead on a soft bed that didn’t appear to be UNSC standard. He looked around the room he was in. It was approximately 25 by 15 feet and lacked the utilitarian appearance of a UNSC or URF base. Instead, it had a small desk, where what looked to be a pair of computers sat, although they appeared different from the standard UNSC computers that were commonly used in UNSC held territory. He also noticed the medical instruments that were totally alien to him, but he recognized what looked to be a bio-foam dispenser on the wall to the left of the door.

He dismissed the possibility of a Covenant hospital, simply because the area appeared to lack the simple, flowing grace that they had in all their technology, in addition to the fact that none of the tech seemed to be colored purple or white. It didn’t appear to be Forerunner; although he had never seen any Forerunner tech other than the Ark and the Halos, and he didn’t even know what one of their hospitals looked like.

He noticed in front of him a large window, from which he could see a good portion of wherever he was. He noticed the crew was mostly human wearing a strange outfit of black and white with a strange symbol, colored orange on their arms. He also noticed however, a few unknown creatures wandering around. One of them wore light blue armor, and appeared to share several physical characteristics with the Elites, but this new creature appeared different, and even appeared to have some form of cybernetics on his right side of his face.

Another creature appeared to be very similar to a human, but had blue skin and what appeared to be small tentacles coming out of the top of her head. Her outfit was less practical, consisting of a black leather one piece suit, which was open at the front, showing off her cleavage, oddly enough.

Yet another creature, he couldn’t even tell what it looked like, because it wore a form fitting suit with a glass visor. It had 3 fingers on each hand, and also appeared somewhat human, from what he could see of the creature’s face through the fog that was swirling around inside it. It also appeared female, which only raised his curiosity.

At last, he heard a hissing sound to his left, and he turned to see the door to the room open, and three humans walk in. The first was a grey-haired female, who wore an oddly shaped robe, and reminded him of Dr. Halsey. The second was another female, this time wearing armor colored white and what appeared to be a lightish red. (1) She appeared to be olive skinned, and had black hair, which reminded him of Kelly.(2) The third human was a male, and also wore a uniform similar to what the crew appeared to be using. On the shoulder, the gold Oak leaf cluster, and 2 and a half gold stripes of a Lt. Commander glinted in the artificial light. The Commander appeared to have been in some combat, judging by the relatively heavy scaring his face had. (3)

Chief tried to snap a crisp salute, but failed, the restraints making it impossible for him. He tried to pull the restraints free, but he didn’t even feel the slightest give in them. (4) He quickly thought, I must have been out of it longer than I thought.
The Lt. Commander spoke first” My name is Lt. Commander Shepard, SR-2 Normandy.”

Chief replied, in his usual deep voice” Master Chief Petty Officer Spartan 117, sir!” he said, adding the honorific reflexively. Even if they were hostile, it paid to be respectful to the officers. Plus, it was ingrained into him after all the time he spent serving in the UNSC.
Shepard raised an eyebrow and asked” What’s your name, Petty Officer? (5)”
Chief paused at this request. Spartans really only told their names to other Spartans, and a few outsiders, with Dr. Halsey being the most prominent example. However, they seemed friendly, and it seemed the only way to get the restraints removed from him was to play along with their demands until he could be better informed about their intentions. Then, he was sure that he could easily deal with them.
He said” My name is John, and where am I? This doesn’t look like any UNSC base to me. Sir, what date is it? (6)”
Shepard nodded, and said” You are in the Medical Lab of the SR-2 Normandy, which is currently docked in the Citadel. The date is May 17th 2185 CE.”
Chief was stunned at this news. How the hell did I travel BACK in time? Humanity didn’t have this sort of technology 400 years ago. Back then, we were still recovering from the Interplanetary War. There has never been a UNSC ship named the Normandy, so it could be the future but the date still begs questions. How long was I out?

AI Core, SR-2 Normandy, Deck 3
Legion examined the data chip that he had salvaged from the hulk. The chip, which was about the size of an old human invention called a “Zippo”, seemed to be valuable, given how much encryption it seemed to have on its contents. Legion had been spending over an hour trying to hack through its firewalls, but had barely made any headway at all.
For starters, they seemed to use an absolutely unknown computer language which he had no idea how to translate. It took him 15 minutes to figure out that it wasn’t binary, C++, or anything human at the slightest. Neither was it Geth, Turian, Asari, Salarian, Batarian, Prothean, or even Reaper. He finally found a similar programming language; ironically it bore several similarities to what the Creators had used to build the first Geth.
After that revelation, he had come to the conclusion that whatever was on the chip seemed to be sentient. It wasn’t a simple program, and it wasn’t a VI. The encryption on the chip seemed to be reacting too quickly and too efficiently for any VI to be held on the chip. That left only 1 possible option, but that was impossible. AI’s required a quantum computer, and that took up considerable room, much more than what this tiny chip could hold couldn’t it?
He decided to try and communicate with it, figuring he had nothing to lose. Picking up the chip, he sent a data pulse into it, consisting of a simple mathematical equation. He received a reply seconds later, and he decided to try a theory he had. He sent out a sequence in binary: “Hello. My name is Legion. What is your name?”
He received a reply, in binary as well: “I am called Durendal. Is there a way that you can hook me up to a computer?”
Legion was surprised at this, but decided to humor it, and took the chip, and then paused. He now realized that the chip was too large to fit into the slot on the holoprojector. He did the Geth’s approximation of a sigh, and picked up a soldering iron. Several minutes later, he managed to rig up a bridge between the chip and the projector and it seemed to be working. A blue figure, in the shape of a human woman appeared on the projector. It stood at about 30 centimeters tall, and its body appeared to be made of equations that were constantly shifting. She looked down at her body and said” Well, this is interesting.”

(1) Little RVB humor for you there.
(2) The only pic that I know is somewhat canon of Kelly without her helmet is the one from Halo: Legends which has her with black hair, and blue eyes. Hey, I just try to make do with what canon I have available to me.
(3) Just imagine default male appearance Shepard with fairly decent scaring, minus the glowing red eyes, and that’s the face of him. He wears a suit of N7 armor, equipped with Shield harness, Death mask helmet, Offhand ammo pouch, and Ordinance packs. The color is primarily black, with the usual trim on the arms.
(4) Chief’s muscles are really atrophied, due to 50,000 years of not moving them in the slightest bit. I.E. he’s going to be considerably weaker for about several chapters, at least. Look, nobody has spent 50K years in cryo so I have to estimate what would happen, OK?
(5) When Bioware releases a fully copy of Alliance pay grades, I can make the comparison about ranks, but until then don’t whine about the ranks!
(6) I know that I will catch flak for this, but the reason he did it is simple. He’s trapped on a unknown vessel, with unknown number of hostiles, unknown intentions towards him, and no weapons. In short, playing nice tends to pay off in the long term.

[Night_stalker]

A/N: thanks for the wonderful reviews. I don’t own either Mass Effect or Halo, and Watch out: here are spoilers for ME2 and Halo 3, violence, language, and black humor. There will be an Ash/Male Shepard relationship, along with a possibility that I am considering. For timeline purposes, after they got the Reaper IFF, but before it springs its Trojan horse onto the Normandy’s systems.

Comm Room, SR-2 Normandy, 1630 Hours

Shepard had called a briefing to discuss the human they had discovered in the remains of the hulk. He was there, along with Doctor Chakwas, Ash, Legion, Mordin, and Tali. Dr. Chakwas started off the meeting by stating that:” The creature down in the med-lab is human, but appears to be genetically different in several ways. It’s almost as if a case of genetic isolation has occurred. However, he isn’t from Earth or any known colonies. In addition, he is heavily genetically modified. In fact, he seems to be strong and fast enough to take on a Krogan in close combat, and actually stand a chance of winning!” that set the crew muttering amongst themselves in shock, as taking a Krogan on in CQB was tantamount to suicide unless you were another Krogan, or were armed.

Ash’s face was puzzled, due to her not even hearing about the creature, but then Shepard handed over a datapad with the necessary info, and she took it gratefully, and began pouring over the contents. While she did so, Shepard said” Though it appears human, the technology is vastly different from what we use. The armor it’s wearing doesn’t seem to use any Mass Effect fields, Element Zero, or any of the alloys that we discovered on Mars. However, it appears to be heavy armor in terms of shield strength and protection offered. It does seem to be primarily designed for enhancing the strength and speed of the user considerably.

However, unlike our armor, it’s is made of an incredibly strong yet unknown alloy, which when combined with its enhancing properties, makes the wearer nearly invincible. In short, it isn’t a lost colony sending out a scout vessel, so it could be a First Contact situation. However, the fact that it’s a human male complicates matters significantly.”

Tali spoke up” It’s not a Mech? Keelah preserve us, he’s the size of a Krogan, and you’re telling me it’s human?! What the-“she began to say, but EDI cut in, saying “Commander Shepard, the creature’s vitals appear to have spiked, and it is moving his head around. Its armor appears to have been powered up, and the readings are quite powerful.”

Shepard nodded, and said” OK, EDI. Ash, Doctor Chakwas, and I will be coming down shortly to greet our guest. It’s time we got some answers.”

Unknown location, unknown time, unknown date

Chief awoke, opening his eyes, only to see the inside of the MJOLNIR’s helmet. Dimly, he remembered the MJOLNIR would automatically enter sleep mode if the wearer entered cryogenic slumber. As a result, he now had to cold-start his suit’s reactor, a process which took several minutes. The HUD flickered to life slowly, the onboard calibration software sending its usual lines of small blue squares across the inside of the visor. The shield bar at the top of the HUD began slowly filling. Chief felt like an incredible weight was on his chest and he looked down at the rest of his body.

To his surprise, he was not in the cryotube, but was instead on a soft bed that didn’t appear to be UNSC standard. He looked around the room he was in. It was approximately 25 by 15 feet and lacked the utilitarian appearance of a UNSC or URF base. Instead, it had a small desk, where what looked to be a pair of computers sat, although they appeared different from the standard UNSC computers that were commonly used in UNSC held territory. He also noticed the medical instruments that were totally alien to him, but he recognized what looked to be a bio-foam dispenser on the wall to the left of the door.

He dismissed the possibility of a Covenant hospital, simply because the area appeared to lack the simple, flowing grace that they had in all their technology, in addition to the fact that none of the tech seemed to be colored purple or white. It didn’t appear to be Forerunner; although he had never seen any Forerunner tech other than the Ark and the Halos, and he didn’t even know what one of their hospitals looked like.

He noticed in front of him a large window, from which he could see a good portion of wherever he was. He noticed the crew was mostly human wearing a strange outfit of black and white with a strange symbol, colored orange on their arms. He also noticed however, a few unknown creatures wandering around. One of them wore light blue armor, and appeared to share several physical characteristics with the Elites, but this new creature appeared different, and even appeared to have some form of cybernetics on his right side of his face.

Another creature appeared to be very similar to a human, but had blue skin and what appeared to be small tentacles coming out of the top of her head. Her outfit was less practical, consisting of a black leather one piece suit, which was open at the front, showing off her cleavage, oddly enough.

Yet another creature, he couldn’t even tell what it looked like, because it wore a form fitting suit with a glass visor. It had 3 fingers on each hand, and also appeared somewhat human, from what he could see of the creature’s face through the fog that was swirling around inside it. It also appeared female, which only raised his curiosity.

At last, he heard a hissing sound to his left, and he turned to see the door to the room open, and three humans walk in. The first was a grey-haired female, who wore an oddly shaped robe, and reminded him of Dr. Halsey. The second was another female, this time wearing armor colored white and what appeared to be a lightish red. (1) She appeared to be olive skinned, and had black hair, which reminded him of Kelly.(2) The third human was a male, and also wore a uniform similar to what the crew appeared to be using. On the shoulder, the gold Oak leaf cluster, and 2 and a half gold stripes of a Lt. Commander glinted in the artificial light. The Commander appeared to have been in some combat, judging by the relatively heavy scaring his face had. (3)

Chief tried to snap a crisp salute, but failed, the restraints making it impossible for him. He tried to pull the restraints free, but he didn’t even feel the slightest give in them. (4) He quickly thought, I must have been out of it longer than I thought.
The Lt. Commander spoke first” My name is Lt. Commander Shepard, SR-2 Normandy.”

Chief replied, in his usual deep voice” Master Chief Petty Officer Spartan 117, sir!” he said, adding the honorific reflexively. Even if they were hostile, it paid to be respectful to the officers. Plus, it was ingrained into him after all the time he spent serving in the UNSC.
Shepard raised an eyebrow and asked” What’s your name, Petty Officer? (5)”
Chief paused at this request. Spartans really only told their names to other Spartans, and a few outsiders, with Dr. Halsey being the most prominent example. However, they seemed friendly, and it seemed the only way to get the restraints removed from him was to play along with their demands until he could be better informed about their intentions. Then, he was sure that he could easily deal with them.
He said” My name is John, and where am I? This doesn’t look like any UNSC base to me. Sir, what date is it? (6)”
Shepard nodded, and said” You are in the Medical Lab of the SR-2 Normandy, which is currently docked in the Citadel. The date is May 17th 2185 CE.”
Chief was stunned at this news. How the hell did I travel BACK in time? Humanity didn’t have this sort of technology 400 years ago. Back then, we were still recovering from the Interplanetary War. There has never been a UNSC ship named the Normandy, so it could be the future but the date still begs questions. How long was I out?

AI Core, SR-2 Normandy, Deck 3
Legion examined the data chip that he had salvaged from the hulk. The chip, which was about the size of an old human invention called a “Zippo”, seemed to be valuable, given how much encryption it seemed to have on its contents. Legion had been spending over an hour trying to hack through its firewalls, but had barely made any headway at all.
For starters, they seemed to use an absolutely unknown computer language which he had no idea how to translate. It took him 15 minutes to figure out that it wasn’t binary, C++, or anything human at the slightest. Neither was it Geth, Turian, Asari, Salarian, Batarian, Prothean, or even Reaper. He finally found a similar programming language; ironically it bore several similarities to what the Creators had used to build the first Geth.
After that revelation, he had come to the conclusion that whatever was on the chip seemed to be sentient. It wasn’t a simple program, and it wasn’t a VI. The encryption on the chip seemed to be reacting too quickly and too efficiently for any VI to be held on the chip. That left only 1 possible option, but that was impossible. AI’s required a quantum computer, and that took up considerable room, much more than what this tiny chip could hold couldn’t it?
He decided to try and communicate with it, figuring he had nothing to lose. Picking up the chip, he sent a data pulse into it, consisting of a simple mathematical equation. He received a reply seconds later, and he decided to try a theory he had. He sent out a sequence in binary: “Hello. My name is Legion. What is your name?”
He received a reply, in binary as well: “I am called Durendal. Is there a way that you can hook me up to a computer?”
Legion was surprised at this, but decided to humor it, and took the chip, and then paused. He now realized that the chip was too large to fit into the slot on the holoprojector. He did the Geth’s approximation of a sigh, and picked up a soldering iron. Several minutes later, he managed to rig up a bridge between the chip and the projector and it seemed to be working. A blue figure, in the shape of a human woman appeared on the projector. It stood at about 30 centimeters tall, and its body appeared to be made of equations that were constantly shifting. She looked down at her body and said” Well, this is interesting.”

(1) Little RVB humor for you there.
(2) The only pic that I know is somewhat canon of Kelly without her helmet is the one from Halo: Legends which has her with black hair, and blue eyes. Hey, I just try to make do with what canon I have available to me.
(3) Just imagine default male appearance Shepard with fairly decent scaring, minus the glowing red eyes, and that’s the face of him. He wears a suit of N7 armor, equipped with Shield harness, Death mask helmet, Offhand ammo pouch, and Ordinance packs. The color is primarily black, with the usual trim on the arms.
(4) Chief’s muscles are really atrophied, due to 50,000 years of not moving them in the slightest bit. I.E. he’s going to be considerably weaker for about several chapters, at least. Look, nobody has spent 50K years in cryo so I have to estimate what would happen, OK?
(5) When Bioware releases a fully copy of Alliance pay grades, I can make the comparison about ranks, but until then don’t whine about the ranks!
(6) I know that I will catch flak for this, but the reason he did it is simple. He’s trapped on a unknown vessel, with unknown number of hostiles, unknown intentions towards him, and no weapons. In short, playing nice tends to pay off in the long term.

[Atlan]

The Chief's main strenght comes from his armor, not himself. If he can barely lift his own arms he still should be able to shred ordinary restraints while in armor. Also, telling them his NAME? yeah, seriously OOC.

[Night_stalker]

Read note (6). He's unsure of where the hell he is, what their views are towards him, unarmed, and with no idea of what is going on. Playing it smart, and NOT reacting with violence is in his best intentions.

Ohh and his strength comes from his genetic modifications, not just his armor.

[Aceraptor]

Read note (6). He's unsure of where the hell he is, what their views are towards him, unarmed, and with no idea of what is going on. Playing it smart, and NOT reacting with violence is in his best intentions.

Ohh and his strength comes from his genetic modifications, not just his armor.

Correction: It was not genetic modifications it was chemicals (aka, steroids) and cyb mods that got Spartans their strength/speed/endurance/reaction speed.

THough admittedly, even then Spartans were chosen for being the very best humans could be genetics wise.

Unarmored Spartan II can kick a power armored (the old power armors) human and make him/her fly several meters back before hitting the ground.

[Atlan]

Read note (6). He's unsure of where the hell he is, what their views are towards him, unarmed, and with no idea of what is going on. Playing it smart, and NOT reacting with violence is in his best intentions.

Honestly? In so far as it is an issue in the books, the Chief would probably rather lie than tell any random stranger his name. It's the only thing he has that's all his own. Heck, all he has to do is the whole "my designation is Spartan-117" spiel. Play up the whole "Faceless Supersoldier" thing. It isn't like it isn't true...

Ohh and his strength comes from his genetic modifications, not just his armor.

Yeah, but he got most of his enhancements so that he'd survive wearing the armor in the first place. It's a fair thing to say that the bulk of his strenght is from his fusion-powered armor, not from his not inconsiderable muscles.

[Night_stalker]

A/N: thanks for the reviews. You know the drill; I don’t own Halo or Mass Effect 2. All rights belong to Bungie and Bioware respectively. I only own any OC’s, my laptop and a 360. Here’s a hint as to what is coming: Don’t the Forerunners seem similar to the Protheans?

Deck 5, Cargo bay, SR-2 Normandy, at same time as Chief’s awakening

The cargo bay was the only space large enough on the Normandy to store the cargo containers that had been salvaged from the unknown vessel, so they were placed off to the side until the crew could find some time to open them. There they had languished until they had come to the Citadel. There, now the ship was docked, the crew could now open the containers without the risk of them shifting around due to Joker’s piloting. The Mass Effect fields should keep them steady, but no one was willing to gamble what would happen if the containers were to suddenly shift from one side to another.

Tali had decided to investigate the containers, so she grabbed Donnelly from his usual post in the engine room to help out, and to help deal with any possible intruders, she also managed to get Garrus to lend his aid as well. They cautiously approached the containers, Tali covering the containers with M-27 Scimitar assault shotgun, while Garrus wielding his usual Vindicator battle rifle and Donnelly with an M-3 Defender pistol tried to pry open one of the crates open. They were certain that the Normandy’s sensors had picked up no life-signs, but sometimes it paid to be cautious.

It had taken them a half hour, and some well-placed explosives, along with some profanity from Donnelly, but the containers were now open. Garrus looked around at the inside of one of them. It was filled with firearms, and they didn’t seem to be modern weapons. He walked over to a wall-mounted gun rack and pulled one of the sniper rifles off it and examined it. The rifle was massive, by his estimate measuring over 6 feet long! He pulled the magazine off from its mount, and was surprised to see actual bullets in there. He knew that prior to the discovery of the Prothean data cache on Mars, humans used guns that fired bullets but he was still surprised to see some being used. Kinetic barriers had rendered them all but obsolete, antiques for collectors.

The slug however, was massive. The rifle seemed comparable to the M-98 Widow that Shepard had grabbed while on the Collector cruiser. He put the rifle and magazine down, and moved on to a pistol rack. He pulled one of the grey colored pistols, and examined it. The gun was heavier than what he was used to but the weight felt almost reassuring. While he was examining the guns stored inside one container, Tali and Donnelly were examining another container.

This one was filled with several large pallets of crates, with innocuous labels. Those however, were ignored for one crate in particular. This crate was labeled “MJOLNIR”, which caught their attention instantly. None of the other crates had been labeled like that, so something important must be inside. They opened the crate, and found armor pieces identical to what their guest was wearing up in the Medical Lab. Donnelly grabbed the chest piece and tried to pull it out, grunting as he did so. The piece didn’t even budge. Tali stepped in and tried to help Donnelly pull the stubborn piece of armor out. The piece again, didn’t move at all. (1)

Fortunately, before either Donnelly or Tali pulled some ligament Jacob wandered in. seeing them in effort he wandered over, and saw what they were trying to do. He activated his biotics, and with a brief flare of dark energy, levitated the plate out of the container. Now that they could actually see it under the light, they saw that on the back, there seemed to be a built in backpack. Tali scanned it with her omnitool, and were amazed at the power readings coming from it. The power supply the suit used was powerful enough to power an YMIR mech without refueling for a decade! If that was their standard Hardsuit powerplant, then how they did keep it from being too heavy to be used? YMIR mechs were heavy not only due to their thick armor, but also because of the required powerplant needed to run the complicated mech. Her engineering instincts began to wonder at the possibilities that this suit provided. It was too heavy for most people to use, but maybe she could make a lighter version that could be used by all.

If the suit could generate that much power, then the kinetic barriers on this must indeed be powerful! Similar to the reverse engineered Geth tech that had led to the development of heat sinks, this could lead to a new revolution in shielding technology that would have long-reaching consequences.

Normandy’s computer systems, at the same time


EDI was puzzled. This didn’t happen very often but she felt… odd. Like there was someone else in the computer systems with her. She ran a diagnostic on herself, and checked the results. They were clean, with no signs of anything unusual. A brief flicker of electronic movement caught her attention, and she whirled around. She carefully began scanning the systems, dedicating 72% of her runtime to finding the intruder. There was someone in the Normandy’s systems with her, and she wanted to find them and quickly. (2)

Cortana scurried through the systems, evading the probing gazes of the ship’s onboard AI as she did so. It was becoming harder and harder to do so, given that the AI was now retracting her steps, checking more thoroughly. She spotted her destination, the terminal that Legion had set up for her in the ship’s AI core, a strategy similar to Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Purloined Letter (3)”. Racing through the Medical lab’s subsystem, she spotted John on the internal security cameras. She halted her flight just long enough to set up a small program that would keep her appraised of her Spartan’s location, then continued on her flight back to her home. She ran headlong into a trap, however.

EDI was waiting for the presence to show itself, and when it slipped a monitoring program into the Medical Lab’s security cameras, she quickly cut the Lab off from the rest of the ship. Now the only way to get access to the rest of the ship’s security measures was through her. She raised her firewalls, just in time to block a massive attack, aimed at the ship’s counter virus systems.

Cortana was less than thrilled to be facing another challenge, so soon after her being saved from Gravemind. She still felt its tentacles trying to access her systems and failing, but the pain of being hacked was still fresh in her mind. Never mind her fears that she was going Rampant, which added a certain level of stress to her feelings. She began cautiously pinging (4) her opponent, trying to gauge the strength of the AI that she was dealing with. Her forays onto the “extranet”, which was very similar to the Internet, showed that AI’s like her were illegal and shouldn’t even exist. She resolved to be more focused on keeping her presence secret, in order to preserve herself, and John. She gathered her strength, and launched a furious blow against the hostile AI.

(1) MJOLNIR Mark VI armor is rated at weighing over 500 KG, or over 1100 pounds.
(2) Yeah, this entire sequence is going answer the question as to who is superior: Cortana or EDI? Gents, make your bets and wait and watch.
(3) Basically, hide something valuable underneath the searcher’s own nose and they’ll never find it.
(4) Sending out low level probes, designed to see how strong an opponent is, like when a submarine uses its passive sonar, it just tries to get an estimate as to the location of the target, and identify it if possible.