Massive Effect - Chapter 2 - updated 15/1/2009

[Eldalote]

Massive Effect

A Star Wars – Mass Effect story (all rights reserved etc.)
Story by Jan Mart Liewes
Proofreading, suggestions and general good ideas by Kartr_Kana

Prologue

Somewhere in the Empire, 63 ABY.

Stera had been sitting in the same uncomfortable chair for over 6 hours now and her back was seriously beginning to hurt. Soon however, it was all going to be worth it. She had chosen this particular chair not for its comforts, but rather for its position.
The seat behind the pilot was the only passenger seat in the transport that had a view out the window and she desperately wanted to see what was outside that window when they exited hyperspace.

She almost jumped when the alarm klaxon rang twice, to announce arrival was imminent, barely able to hide her excitement. With a flicker of pseudo motion the mottled sky of hyperspace changed into the blackness of space. The sky wasn’t empty however; sensors indicated there were over a thousand ships all around them.

“Ah, goddamnit, I’ve been sitting in this chair all this time to see the fleet, and there’s no star nearby for proper lighting?” she said with an odd mixture of anger and disappointment in her voice.

“Heh, could have told you. Besides we’re not docking with the Spectrum anyways, just the Hunter. Looks like any other Stardestroyer.” The pilot replied.


Too bad, the pilot thought to himself; he would have loved to see it. In the darkness of interstellar space all he could see was the twenty five kilometer long silhouette of the majestic ship. It was supposedly the most powerful, and expensive, ship in the entire Imperial navy.

The entire Spectrum fleet consisted out of specially redesigned “S” class ships. The “S” stood for super or spectrum or something along those lines and the ships were designed for ultimate power to size ratio, no expensed spared.

Too bad he was only dropping off some passengers; he would have loved to serve in that fleet.


“Ah well, I’ll see it sooner or later.” Stera said with a sigh. She would of course, but she had wanted it to be the first thing she saw when she arrived at her new assignment. The ship housed the legendary 501st legion, reborn to even greater glory in the new empire. Over a million of the very best of stormtroopers and she was going to serve with them. Well… okay, not with them, but she was stationed in the same fleet at least. Sighing again she put her helmet on, it was time to get her assignment.

-=-

Emily was standing at attention with the other two hundred new stormtroopers assigned to the ISSD Hunter’s squadron. The Hunter itself didn’t need new troopers of course, it had a full legion. The smaller ships in the squadron however were assigned additional troops for the long combat mission ahead.

“At ease! You may remove your helmets.” The colonel shouted as he entered the room.
“SST-UNA-1 through SST-UNA-100, you have been assigned to the dreadnoughts, you will receive your posting in barracks 4.” He waited patiently while half of the men and women exited the room. “The rest of you have been assigned to smaller ships. You will get your posting from the lieutenant, here.” He pointed out the lieutenant shortly and walked out of the room. The lieutenant stepped forward.

“SST-UNA-101, you have been assigned to interdictor 1, you are now SST-HU-I1-1, proceed to barracks 2. SST-UNA-102, you have been assigned to interdictor 1, you are now SST-HU-I1-2, proceed to barracks 2……”

Private First Class Emily Ester, now SST-HU-M3-2 looked around subsection 3 of barracks 2. Around her were the other nine troopers assigned to the Manglers. She spotted the Chiss Staff sergeant who had been posted at the same Mangler as herself. She walked over to her and saluted.

“Private First Class M3-2, Emily Ester, reporting ma’am.”
The woman returned the salute, then offered a friendly handshake. “Good to meet you Ester, I’m staff sergeant M3-1, you may call me Stera.” She paused for a second, looking around the room. “I think it’s time we meet our captain.”

-=-

Lieutenant-commander Yornic, Keller Yornic, was sitting at one of the tables of the officers lounge of the Hunter. He was a relatively young man, maybe mid thirties, with a small build and short brown hair. He frowned almost all the time. Even when he smiled, laughed or cried there still was a hint of a frown to be seen on his face. Most of his crew thought he was simply born with it, unable to have any other facial expression.

You wouldn’t believe it when you saw his face, but he was actually a happy man. About six months ago he was promoted and assigned to the Spectrum fleet. The first three days after he got the news he was in a state of euphoria, being chosen to serve in the most advanced fleet of the galaxy! The euphoria died down rather quickly however when further orders were posted and it became clear he was going to be a Mangler captain. Not that there was anything wrong with Manglers of course, they were just... Small.

He had always imagined himself commanding a Stardestroyer, maybe even a small fleet and now he was stuck on a Mangler. In the following six months he had regained most of his happiness after he found out he had a good crew, a good ship and a good squadron captain. And now, almost exactly six months later, he was sitting in the Hunter’s mess hall waiting for yet another exiting moment in his career.

Today, two stormtroopers would be posted at his ship. Even in the new empire, with a military power greater than ever before, stormtroopers were still low in numbers and very valuable, that two of them would be posted at his tiny ship really was quite a big moment.


“Hmm… barracks 2… barracks 2… I can’t seriously be lost, can I?” Yornic thought to himself; even with his sense for direction he had too much pride to simply ask for directions, of course.
“Why don’t they simply put op maps all over the place? Probably had something to do with intruder security or something.”

The frown on his face was mixed with anger at this moment, making it a very odd facial expression. He was going to be late, what kind of impression of his abilities was that going to give his new crewmembers? He hastened his pace, settling for a balance between speed and dignity.

“Why does a ship even need so many freaking barracks? They can house a thousand troops and they still need ten? I wish I was getting ten thousand stormtroopers…” He thought to himself, more than a bit jealous of Stardestroyer captains.

“Ah, Barracks 2, now what? Subsection 3… right.” He walked into the barrack paying almost no attention to the guards standing outside. He quickly spotted subsection 3 and hurried inside.

“Damnit, I am the last one!” He thought to himself when he noted only to troopers were left in the room. Two female troopers… one of them actually quite good looking. “Well, as far as the armor they are wearing will allow good looking, hehe.” He thought to himself.

The two troopers had spotted him and were walking over. Both tall and strong build women, clad in pearly white armor, with their face-covering helmets hanging on their back.

They saluted and stood stiff at attention, absentmindedly he returned the salute. He looked at the taller of the two; she had a really nice looking face… good rough skin, with a number of large scars covering her face. Her blue skin worked perfectly with her green eyes… he had worked with enough Chiss to no longer be put off by blue. Most men would probably not agree that she was a good looking woman, but then again, most men don’t have taste, he thought to himself.

The women said something about “SST-something-something-2-something” but he really didn’t pay attention. Her black-blue hair, just a bit shorter then shoulder length, had a dull shine, giving a perfect casing for her lovely face. He stared dreamily at her face.


The two women shortly looked at each other and then turned their attention back to the captain.

“Uhm, Sir?” Stera said, just a bit louder than normal.
His eyes suddenly snapped back into focus, as if waked from a daydream.“Hmm, Yes?”

Emily rolled her eyes and Stera raised her eyebrows just a bit. “Sir, we introduced ourselves? Do you have orders or do you want to say something, sir?” The man looked a bit confused but then straightened himself and introduced himself too.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you both, I’m Lieutenant-commander Yornic, Keller Yornic, welcome to the Shield IV’s crew” He said with a mixture of a smile and a frown on his face, Stera didn’t really know what to make of it. “Please, follow me, I will show you your new home for the coming year.” He said.

“If I can find the way back that is.” He quietly added to himself.

[Alien-Carrot]

Alot of people would be interested in reading it, unless it blows ass.

Even then it might be fun as flaimbait.

Write away.

[Eldalote]

*starts*
I will be my first ever story written in english and my second story written period.
I think the first chapter will be up in a few days.

[Eldalote]

*edit* prologue posted in first post.

[Eldalote]

Chapter 1

The Shield IV was a good ship. It was small and highly automated, so it had a very small crew. The upside of this was that even after the first day she had been posted here, she already knew about half the crew by face and name. It also meant it wasn’t exactly a glorious job. But glory never was one of Stera’s goals. If she had wanted glory, she wouldn’t ever have worn the anonymity of the stormtrooper helmet.

Stera put her thoughts on hold as she continued to unpack her stuff. The ship only had two types of rooms, the one person rooms for the captain and the XO and the five person rooms for everyone else. This meant that Emily and herself were now sharing a five person room with just the two of them. She normally wasn’t into luxury so much, but she had to admit it was nice. They had a shower and toilet just for the two of them, something that was considered luxury even on the big ships, and the extra bed and closet space meant they now had a private armory.

The ship already had a compliment of nine marines, the standard for its size. Marines and stormtroopers always had had a love-hate relationship; she was taking over as chief of security on the ship, so she was definitely stepping on some toes, on the other hand, the marines did realize that stormtroopers on the ship just couldn’t be a bad thing.

She knew how things worked; she herself had been a marine before she was accepted into stormtrooper training, and in that time she had felt hurt too when stormtroopers simply took over whenever they arrived at the scene.

The deck shivered slightly, the telltale sign of the ship going into hyperspace.
“Hm, odd, we are still docked to the Hunter… I wonder what is going on.” She thought to herself. Her questions would be answered shortly however, as the captain started an announcement over the intercom.

-=-

It’s time, Yornic thought to himself, to inform the crew of the mission.
He stood up from his chair and made a serious face. He pressed the button on his console and started his announcement.

“Crew of the shield, I have just been briefed on the details our mission by the squadron captain and I have been told to inform the crew.” He didn’t really like making intercom announcements; he felt it was too impersonal.

“As you all know, our galaxy was recently attacked by aliens called the ‘Vong’.
Though their fleet was easily defeated by the combined republican-imperial forces, the admiralty thinks it was just a forward force, or even a scout party.”
He really didn’t like the idea of a hundred thousand ships for a scout party, but he had faith in the analysis of the admiralty.

“Our fleet is on a scout mission to find the galaxy the Vong came from. Fourteen other fleets, three republican and eleven imperial, have been sent to scout other galaxies. In recognition of this fleets potential we are being sent to the galaxy most likely to be the one the Vong originated form. We are to locate them and report back, so a larger taskforce can be put together to eradicate these Vong.”


“Any questions so far, or shall I continue to the mission details?” It was silent for a moment, until Steve, the pilot on duty, spoke up.

“Has the admiralty gone mad sir? Just fifty squadrons to scout an entire galaxy?”
He was dangerously close to disrespecting the admirals, but Yornic liked it when people spoke their mind.

“Ah, petty officer Merral made a valid point here. We are not to scout every single planet in a galaxy, of course. If the Vong control an entire galaxy, we should be able to establish that rather quickly. One ship could probably do the job, the fleet is mostly there to fend them off, should we be attacked. Any more questions?” Since nobody spoke, he started with the details.

-=-

The rest of the briefing was long and boring, but Emily was able to pick up the most important bits. They would remain docked to the Hunter until they reached ‘Midway’, a small star cluster almost perfectly halfway to the other galaxy. That part of the trip would take about a month. At midway, the fleet would refuel and the smaller ships would undock from the stardestroyers. The second half of the journey would also take about a month, but it would be considerably less comfortable, as they would be locked on this small ship the whole time. Arriving in the other galaxy they would look around an unspecified amount of time and then do the whole trip again, in the other direction.


When the briefing had finished she let herself fall backwards onto the bed she was sitting on. She laid still for a minute or so, just watching Stera organize her clothing and weapons.

“Damn, this is going to be a long haul.” She finally said. Stera smiled and chuckled.
Emily turned on her back. “Hey! What’s so funny?”

Stera smiled again. “Honey, you haven’t served on ships before have you?”
She was taken slightly aback by this. “Not really, no. I served on a Dreadnought once, but that was only for two weeks.”

“I would get comfortable if I were you, my longest tour was a full two years without shore leave.” Emily’s eyes widened, then she stood up.

“Pfff, sister, I need a drink. Stardestroyers have bars, right?” Stera’s reply was laughing out loud and giving her a pat on the shoulder.

“Don’t drink too much, you have duty at five tomorrow.”

“Yeah, just a couple of beers.” Emily said as she walked out the door.

-=-

The Hunter had several bars and the one she entered was packed. Not too strange considering it had a total crew of forty-five thousand she thought to herself. After she got a beer she started to wander around a bit, searching for a table she could join. She spotted one of the Shield’s crew sitting at a table in one of the corners and started toward him. She pumped down on the chair across from him.

“Hey, Shield, right?” She said and took a sip of her drink. The man across from her was maybe in his mid twenties, short and skinny and had short brown hair. He looked up from his own drink and smiled.

“Yeah, you are the new one aren’t you, Emily, right?” She smiled back at him and decided he was kinda cute.

“Yeah, that’s me, though I must admit I forgot your name, sorry.”

In all truthfulness, she knew his name perfectly well but she wanted something to start the conversation. He pulled his head back in mock offence but then smiled again.

“Ah, no worries, you’re new so it’s forgiven. I’m Pete. So… How is the Shield?”

Good, he had a sense of humor she thought to herself. She looked around the bar.
“Well, it aint no Stardestroyer… But I think I can learn to like it. I must admit I’ve never really served on a ship before though.” She took another sip from her beer.

“It’s smaller than I expected though.” He smiled absentminded at that remark.

“Yeah it is. That’s the thing most people complain about at first. But then again, it is only a hundred meters long and most of it is filled up with engines, shields and a lot of guns, which simply doesn’t leave much room for the people.”

“I’ll get used to it I guess. For now, I have a beer and a nice young man sitting with me, so I should survive the evening.” She added with a wink. He seemed to blush at her compliment. Oh yes, it was going to be a nice evening indeed. Maybe even a nice night, she thought to herself and smiled.

-=-

Stera woke up in the middle of the night as she heard soft footsteps next to her bed. She silently turned her head and saw Emily sneaking into the room, wearing only her underwear and a shirt. She smiled to herself, she started socializing alright. Only one day on the ship and she is already looking for ‘special friends’. She turned around again and went back to sleep.


Wards 3, Citadel, 2186 AD.


Herman was leaning on the railing of the balcony of his apartment, taking in the sight of a morning at the wards. He was a human male in his thirties, rather tall and strongly built. He was one of humanities very few biotics, but even more important, he was a SPECTRE.

Shortly after Shepard’s success with the Geth problem the Counsel had been looking for a second human to become one of their special operatives, and they had found him. He had been a commander, XO on a frigate, just like Shepard had been and his N7 status combined with the fact he was biotic had made him an ideal candidate.

He did consider himself a bit of an odd person though. Even in a time where translating machines could be carried around on a necklace he still knew several languages. English and Chinese obviously, but also the galactic trading language, Asories, one of the main asari languages, a few words of Turian and the most odd thing of all, he spoke fluent Dutch.

Back on Earth all languages except English, Chinese and German had died out, and the later two were headed in the same direction. However, every country in the world would have small group of people clinging to their nationality and that nation’s language. His parents had been two of those kinds of people. The result of this was that he spoke a language that maybe a few hundred people in the galaxy spoke; even the automated translators didn’t have it in their database.

“Goedenmorgen schat, lekker geslapen?” Dutch for “Good morning honey, did you sleep well?” said a gentle female voice from behind him. He turned around and smiled, Emyra walked onto the balcony. He hugged her and gave her a quick kiss on the forehead.

“Emares tralluy fectreser, tu vas na eomoires?” Asories for “I slept very well my dear, and you?” he said as he turned back to the view, his armed still around her waist.

Emyra was the asari Spectre he had been assigned to after his appointment, so he could learn the trade of the business from her. Working closely together, they had quickly fallen in love and married a year later. There had been a bit of commotion about this, SPECTRES were supposed to work alone after their initiation period, but they worked together so well it had been allowed.

“I slept well too. You should get dressed though; we have a meeting with the Counsel in one hour.” She said, in galactic trade this time. He sighed “Yes, I probably should.” He reluctantly turned around and went inside.

-=-

“Commander Steins and Huntress S’rahe, recently another group of people, Volus this time, have been abducted to be sold to the collectors.” Councilman Anderson, the human representative of the Counsel, spoke to them in his office.

“The activity of the Collectors has spiked the last year. As any incursion into their space so far has failed, we need some other way to hinder and stop them.”

They both nodded, the Collectors were becoming more and more of a problem and they had realized this for some time.

“The Counsel wants the two of you to find their base of operations in our space and their contacts, and stop them. If at all possible, try to arrest at least one of these elusive Collectors. All information on them is in these briefings.” He handed them a pair of electronic pads. “Good hunting, dismissed.” He added.

As they walked out of Anderson’s office they started reading the reports. During the entire elevator ride down and the walk to the cantina neither said a word. It was only after half an hour after they had arrived that both had finished reading.

“By the unity… I didn’t realize the Collectors had gotten this busy. Most of it must have stayed hidden from the media.” Emyra said with a noticeable stain of disgust in her voice. “I am happy we got this assignment, I really want to put an end to this.”

The asari had been the first to be targeted some five hundred years ago when they'd first emerged from the Omega-4 relay, and she well remembered the impact it had on her when it happened, she'd only been a child at the time.

Her husband took hold of her left hand and squeezed it slightly. “So do I honey, so do I. Now where do you think we should start? The shadow broker?”

The shadow broker was the best information dealer in the galaxy and a logical place to start any Spectre investigation.

“Probably a good idea, yes. I hope he has some good leads, I really don’t want to go digging around Omega again.” He sighed; he obviously didn’t like the idea of running around Omega too.

“I’m afraid we might have to, it is the place they seem to frequent most.”

Omega was a large asteroid mined in an ancient past by the Protheans. Now it had a large lively colony on its surface.

Too lively to their taste, way too lively. It was a lawless piece of rock floating around, attracting the scum of the galaxy. The last time they had been there, they had walked right into the middle of a gang war.

“I do hope the Talons are gone by now.” She added, with a tone that made very clear what her thoughts about that gang were.


Shield IV, somewhere in the void between galaxies.


Clang!

Stera was wide awake. It had unmistakably been the sound of something metal hitting the deck. It had been twenty days since they had left the galaxy and by this time, the Shield was totally empty. Everybody except Stera and Emily had been living on the Hunter the past twenty days and she knew for sure Emily was off having sex with someone. Which left only one option; someone who was not supposed to be there had knocked something over.

It could of course be one of the crew, returning to the Shield for some reason. But there was always the chance it really was someone that was not supposed to be there. A saboteur was unlikely, there were no civilians on board and they were completely isolated in hyperspace. It could always be a thief, hoping to catch the Shield completely abandoned.
She’d love to think the military only had noble people in service, but that would be naïve.

Okay, a thief then, she decided. The internal discussion had only taken a second, now she had to decide how to handle it. She got out of bed without making a sound and walked over to her ‘armory’. Donning her armor would take too much time, but if there were more than one of them… No she could handle a few of them, even without armor.

She quickly grabbed her E-15 blaster from the bed and inserted a power pack. Mental checklist, “Set for stun” she thought out loud.

Nothing happened. “Oh, wait, no neural link” she thought and manually flipped the switch. Next, check powerlevels, “Damnit I’ve grown too dependent on the HUD” she angrily told herself as she brought the gun up to her face to check the levels.

Quietly she walked over to the door, her bare feet making no sound at all. She listened carefully at the door, waiting for the footsteps to come closer.



Emily was having a solidly bad day so far. Her shift had been boring, her drinks at the bar had been tasteless, the sex had been bad, on the way back to her quarters she knocked over a maintenance droid and just to top it all off she was now staring down the barrel of a loaded E-15.

She looked at the woman holding the gun; Stera was standing there, wearing nothing more than her panties and looked like she was still half asleep.

She slowly raised her hands. “Whoa, I do hope that thing is set for stun?”

Stera cleared her throat and said with a grumpy voice “What the fuck are you doing here, aren’t you supposed to have sex or something?” Only after she had finished she finally lowered her gun.

Emily rolled her eyes “Yeah, I was having sex… right until he came after just five minutes.”

The woman stepped aside to let Emily into the room. She flipped the light switch and Stera closed the door. “Damn, I need a shower and a drink…” she said as she started to undo her boots.

Stera disarmed her weapon and put it back on the bed. “Hey, the shower is right there. But in all seriousness, it couldn’t have been just five minutes…” she said with a tone of disbelief.

“You wouldn’t by any chance happen to have a bottle of strong stuff around here, would you?” Emily asked while she started stripping. “And, yeah, it was under five minutes, four minutes and fifty-two seconds to be precise.” Stera looked like she was too stunned to say something.

“What?” she asked as she walked into the shower. Stera came back into reality and shook her head a few times as she walked over to the door and leaned into the opening.

“Ehm, what’s wrong? Two things are wrong! First, that a man can cum after such a short time. But second and most importantly; how the fuck can you keep track of the seconds while having sex?!”

Emily, now standing under the running shower and carefully washing everything that that pathetic man had left behind on her off of herself, simply shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe it was simply that bad.”

Stera shook her head and flipped the lights off again. She ignored the little “Hey!” and went back to bed.
“Just be quiet when you get out!” she said and turned around.

-=-

The last thirty days had been dull, but they were nothing compared to what the next thirty days were going to be like, Yornic thought to himself, so far the Hunter had provided them with a lot of entertainment, from bars to cinemas or just plain people to talk to. The coming thirty days would have none of that.

“ETA five minutes, sir.” the navigator said from his station. He didn’t actually have to do anything; they were still docked to the Hunter, but it simply was procedure to announce hyperspace ETA.

They were to undock as soon as they exited hyperspace, not that the Hunter would be refueled the first, but it had to do something with procedure, again. “ETA one minute, sir!” the navigator said again.

One minute later he felt the deck shiver slightly as the fleet entered realspace. “Sensors, report!” he ordered. A few seconds later the sensor operator answered

“One thousand three hundred and sixty-six ships on the sensors, sir. It looks like we’re all here!”

Good, no problems so far then, Yornic thought as he flipped a switch on his control board. A few seconds later he was connected to the Hunter’s squadron coordination officer. “Shield IV standing ready to undock, Hunter, waiting for your orders.”

“received, Shield IV, you may begin your undocking procedures.” The reply came after a few seconds.

“Begin Undocking.” He told his helmsman. So, their true isolation had begun.

-=-

For millions of years it had been dormant. Or maybe it had been closer thousands, it couldn’t really remember, but it had been a long time. Suddenly, after so many years of sleeping it had finally been awakened. It knew it wasn’t supposed to think about such things, it was a machine after all, it was supposed to sleep and wait, and then when it was awakened it was supposed to bring ships from one place to another.

But it had been asleep for so long! It simply couldn’t remember the last time it had seen ships. And now, suddenly there were over a thousand of them! It had been very happy when its scanners had picked up the ships, ready to do what it was meant to do. But it was shocked to see none of the ships was paying attention to it!

The first day it had silently waited, hoping it would be discovered, silently observing as the ships moved about, refueling each other. The second day however; it had grown angry! It hadn’t slept for so long just to be ignored! And with its anger, it started to build up energy. Now the ships had noticed, but they simply raised shields and ignored it! How could they! It would show them!


At the end of the second day it had finally stored enough power to do what it was meant to do, and just as the group jumped into hyperspace, it lashed out, just in time to hit one of the smaller ships. It smiled to itself, it had done what it was meant to do, now, it could go back to sleep and wait for the next ships to show up.

[Coiler]

Seems like a decent story, but the writing is a little flat, for lack of a better word. Try to use more description later on.

[Kartr_Kana]

Very interesting and I actually kind of like the writing style. Two points though, A) you need a proof reader your grammar is really good for a non-native English speaker, but there were a few mistakes. B) For the commander of an Imperial warship, or for any ship actually Yoric seems a little bit incompetent.

Over all I like what you've written so far and am really looking forward to finding out more about these "SPECTERES" since I've never heard of them before. Keep up the good work!

[Eldalote]

Well, if anyone is volunteering to be a proof-reader, let me know I don't really have any native English speaking friends...

*Edit* Found one

[Eldalote]

I would like to point out that Kartr_kana has been a great help with proofreading and good ideas.
After his review and some rethinking of my own I rewrote some parts of the prologue and chapter 1.
The previous posts have been updated.


Chapter 2


The Shield IV, Midway.


“Countdown to jump, one minute.”

Yornic looked around the bridge. Only himself and four others were on duty, they would be entering hyperspace in a minute and then they would be isolated for a month, no reason to have any more on the bridge than necessary.

The pilot began his countdown “Jump in 10… 9… 8… 7…”.

Eric, one of the sensor operators on duty, looked up and laughed. “If you need to go to the toilet, do it now, no more breaks until we’re there!”

Everyone started laughing, even Yornic couldn’t stop a smile from creeping past his frown.

“3… 2… 1…” The deck shivered slightly, indicating the jump to hyperspace.


The Mangler is a small and very compact class, relying purely on sensors and leaving no room for windows. Because there were no windows, nobody was looking outside and the only warning of what was about to happen was a small light suddenly blinking to life on the sensor station, but Eric was too busy laughing to notice the little light.

A fraction of a second after the jump to hyperspace everyone’s laughing was roughly interrupted as suddenly the whole ship shook violently.


It took Yornic not more than half a second to recover, he slapped the alarm button and shouted trough the now blaring klaxon. “Interdiction! Action stations!”

“We’re back in realspace! Scope is empty.” Sensors reported.

The crew reacted almost as fast as he had, he heard the shield operator report that the shield were up and weapons charging and he saw the pilot start evasive maneuvers. His stomach lurched as the inertial compensators struggled to keep up with the wild turn the ship was now making.

“Sensors, is the scope still empty? Where is the rest of the fleet? And where is that interdiction field coming from?” he ordered.

“I… I don’t know sir… scope is empty… wait, strike that, there is one object, no power readings, no movement, several light minutes away. We are alone here captain, wherever ‘here’ is. Sir, I’m not even reading an Interdiction field sir.”

Yornic looked up from his console and frowned even more than usual. “What do you mean, wherever here is? We can’t have traveled more than a few million kilometers in that time!”

Eric now looked up from his screens as well; he had a look of panic on his face. “I don’t know sir, but it looks like we’ve arrived at the other galaxy.”

-=-

By the time they had donned their armor and she had made her way up to the bridge, everyone was now seated at their stations. Stera looked around; the bridge was in a sort of orderly chaos. Everyone was at attention, concentrating at their screens, but she could see that the fire-coordinator wasn’t relaying any orders to the guns.

“Must mean there aren’t any enemies nearby then, but then what had happened?” she thought to herself.

At the other end of the bridge she could see that the captain and the XO were in a heated discussion with the six sensor operators, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying. She switched her communications to the security channel. “Status report. Does anyone know what happened yet?”

“All marines report on duty and ready, ma’am.” One of the marines replied; “We don’t know what happened either, but I’m not sure anyone knows yet.” he added.

She slowly nodded, even if they knew, informing the grunts was not exactly a priority. She thought for a moment and then sighed. “Okay people, everybody to their posts and be ready for action, but for now we wait and stay out of their way. We’ll be informed when we need to be informed.”


SSV Spirit of Unity, near Distarion, somewhere on the edge of the Traverse.


The Spirit of Unity soared through space towards the planet; it was a long flight away from the relay but that was one of the reasons Double Helix had set up on this planet.
Double Helix, a human research company with a lot of shady contracts, had a habit of making itself hard to find.

According to the shadow broker, this particular base was a cover for a large mercenary group that was responsible for some of the collector-kidnappings.

Herman, sitting at one of the currently unused navigation stations, was thinking about how he was going to persuade the company CEO to tell them how he made a deal with the Collectors.

He had had a good night sleep and he was in a very good mood. Herman had the reputation of being a creative interrogator, not the torture creative kind mind you, he was a decent man. Today, he felt extra creative and had mentally started to create a script for the encounter.

His wandering mind was pulled back to reality by the sound of a hail from the planet. He stood up and walked over to the pilot, who was looking at him with the question visible on his face. Herman gave him a short nod and the pilot opened the channel.

“Attention alliance vessel, identify yourself and your landing rights or we will take action.”

Friendly bunch, Herman thought to himself. The pilot gave the standard reply.

“This is the SSV Spirit of Unity, you will give us immediate landing rights and stand dwon; we are on official council business.”

The radio was silent for a good thirty seconds before the reply came. “Eeehm, Spirit of Unity, negative on the landing rights, we’ll need to confirm your council orders before we can let you land.” Herman smiled to himself, oh yes, they’ve definitely got something to hide.

The pilot, who had worked with Spectres for several years now, was expecting a reply like this. “Unacceptable, we will receive immediate landing rights, now. You can inspect our credentials after landing, we have Spectres on board.”

The tower operator apparently decided the anger of Spectres was worse than the anger of his boss and this time the reply came within seconds. “Roger that, you can land at pad 3. Landing control, out.”

As Herman made his way aft, the Spirit started to dive into the atmosphere towards the landing bays.

-=-

The Tameras research base was bigger than it had seemed from space, and as they exited the airlock Emyra saw ten guards waiting for them.

“Hm, it looks like we’re at the right address, most bases this size don’t even have ten guards.” She whispered to her husband, who was walking right next to her.

Not that she was intimidated by ten mercenaries, more the other way around even. She couldn’t blame them; two Spectres, followed by three N7 marines and three asari commando’s, all heavily armed and in full body armor, was a really intimidating sight.

As they approached one of the guards, a vicious looking Turian stepped forward.

“Stop right there. You are not setting foot inside this base until I’ve seen your Spectre credentials.” His stance was one of confidence, but from his voice it was clear that he was barely able to control his fear. Clearly there was something shady going on here.

Emyra slowly took a small data card and inserted it into her Omni-tool. The Omni-tool created a holographic projection of their credentials. As she showed it to the guard she was paying extra attention to their actions, some people would rather try to kill Spectres then let them do their business.

Whether they thought the Spectres wouldn’t be able to unravel their secrets or the mercenaries simply weren’t paid good enough she didn’t know, but after inspecting the holo for a few seconds the guard stepped back. “Okay, you can enter.”

She didn’t say anything as they walked past the guards and acted as if she was totally ignoring them. In truth she was still very alert; they could still decide attacking them from behind was a good idea.

As their group entered to lobby of the complex the guards walked off in a different direction, and she finally relaxed a bit. Emyra was finally able to shift her thoughts to the upcoming meeting.


The Shield IV, location unknown.


The Shield was at full battle alert, as it had been for the last four hours and still there was no enemy to fight. The crew was beginning to grow tired. Four hours of battle wasn’t that long, but four hours of concentrating on nothing was. The only eight people on the ship who were still clear minded and paying full attention were the captain, the XO and the sensor operators. For the last four hours they had been scanning the region for any clues as to what had happened and where they were. What had happened was still a complete mystery but with a beep the computer announced it had finally pinpointed their location.

“Huh...” Was the only thing Lt. Traller, the sensor chief, could say.

“Huh indeed. Damn… that is a long way away. How did the computer even have that kind of data?” Gsahe, the XO, asked nobody in particular, his mouth still hanging slightly open.

“Well... since navigation by stars isn’t possible in the inter-galactic void, our navi-computer got an update with a lot more detailed mapping of the other galaxies. I guess that’s how it found out.” Yornic said, still staring at the screen.

He turned to Traller “And you are one hundred percent sure that that space station that was building up energy couldn’t have done this?”

Lieutenant Traller snorted softly “One hundred percent sir. It didn’t even have enough energy to get us a few light hours away, let alone sixty million light years, sir.”

Sixty million… Sixty damn million light years… fuck. In his head there was a chorus of monkeys shouting how screwed they were, but on the outside he didn’t show any of it, he was the captain of the ship, and damnit, he would behave like a captain. Focus man, focus.
He imagined the monkeys being shot by a platoon of stormtroopers, the internal battle died down and he was back to reality.

“Okay, something got us here, so that must mean that something can get us back again, we just have to find it.” Yornic straightened his back, now confidence was even more important than normal, panic would only make matters worse.

“What about our orders, sir? What are we supposed to do?” Yornic knew his XO well, the man was hard and strong and his blue face showed almost no emotion, he knew him too well maybe. Even through his confident stance and hard face he could still see and hear the panic of the man in his last sentence. At least he isn’t showing it, he thought to himself.

“I would say our orders are void.” He choose his words carefully, he didn’t want to lie, but he didn’t want to seed panic either “There simply is no way we can make the rendezvous. We are alone here, if any other ship had been ‘sent’ here, we would have seen it by now. The hunter is likely to come looking for us when they notice we are gone, but it would take them at least two months to get to midway, and then they have to manage to get here somehow. Until such time that the Hunter arrives, we’ll just have to survive on our own. Like I said before, there has to be something here to get us back, and we will find it.” His tone of voice made it clear that he would not tolerate his officers doubting that statement.

“I am going to inform the rest of the crew now, they don’t need to know all the details, but they at least deserve to know what is going on.” He looked sternly at the XO and the lieutenant “You will not show any doubt about our survival or rescue, is that clear?”

“It is sir.” Gsahe said and the lieutenant nodded.

“Good. Now, since there isn’t anything dangerous nearby, I think we can stand down from actions stations, don’t you think?”

-=-

Stera had been standing still for the last four hours and the sight of the little red dot on her HUD indicating action stations going out was one she welcomed. She widened her stance and moved about a bit, stretching her muscles.

Still on the security channel of the com she told everyone to stand at ease. She didn’t mind action, she had to admit she even liked combat a bit, but just standing at one place for hours on end was the aspect of being a stormtrooper on a ship she didn’t like.

“So, are we going to get an explanation now ma’am?” One of the marines asked over the com.

“We’ll see private, if the captain wants to tell us something, he’ll do it whenever he damn well feels like it.” She replied a bit harsher than she had planned, the private in question was young and inexperienced, barely eighteen years old, and still had to learn that grunts are always the last to know anything. Unless they had to go fight somewhere of course.

As if he had overheard their conversation, the captain started to make an announcement.

“Attention crew, you are all aware that something happened the moment we left midway, however, none of you know what exactly happened. It turns out we have somehow been transported to another galaxy, unfortunately not the galaxy we were going to in the first place. The galaxy we are in now is too far away for us to just fly back and rescue will arrive in over two months. There is good news as well however; we were brought here in some way, that means there must be some way to get us back. We will find that way, and when the rest of our squadron arrives to rescue us, we will show them that we do not need to be rescued!”

The captain stopped for a moment and Stera could see him straighten his back even further as he drew a deep breath.

“The coming two months will be hard, but we have a fine ship and a great crew and we will overcome this challenge together. Let us make the empire proud.”

A few seconds after the announcement finished the captain contacted Stera directly on her comm. “Sergeant, I would like to speak to you, please report to the bridge.”

“On my way sir” she replied. Why he hadn’t just spoken to her directly she didn’t know; she was only about ten meters from the captain after all, he probably hadn’t noticed her.

As she reached him she stood at attention and saluted.

The captain looked up from his display and looked puzzled at her for a moment, then pointed at her for a second. “You… You are the sergeant? Oh, my fault, I thought you were the private… Sorry, ehm, you may remove your helmet.”

Stera had to admit to herself she was slightly amused, for some reason no non-stormtrooper could tell them apart. As she removed her helmet he smiled warmly at her. She smiled back, not really sure what to think of it, but at least he wasn’t drooling anymore she thought.

“You wanted to see me captain?” her voice was strictly business and professional.

“Yes… We have detected an object a few light minutes from here, possibly a derelict space station, and I want you to explore it. It appears to be dormant and we aren’t detecting any life signs, but I still want a full combat team scouting the place before I sent some techs in. We will be there in twenty minutes; you have fifteen to get your combat team ready.”

She snapped at attention and saluted again. “Yes sir, we will be ready.” As she turned around and walked towards the exit she’d already started giving orders through her comm. Finally, something to do.


On the planet Distarion.


Spectres have full authority in the entire galaxy, they don’t have to follow the law, they can break in and steal information, kill, and, in some rare situations, even torture people. Some Spectres were hated, some were loved; mostly depending on how they conducted their affairs. Emyra and Herman had developed a rather successful interrogation technique. They were both decent people, they wouldn’t kill or hurt someone unless there was no other way, and since Emyra had been a Spectre for a little over two hundred and forty years now, her reputation was well known. Herman however was relatively new on the scene, his lack of reputation combined with good portion of acting talent and a hint of true lunacy easily convinced a lot of people that he really would kill or torture them. Their usual routine would consist of him threatening and scaring the subject while she would ask the questions.

Emyra smiled to herself, he was obviously happy today and her experience with him told her that would make him extra creative in his ‘play’. He grinned widely at one of his thoughts.

“Don’t overdo it honey, we wouldn’t want him dropping dead from fear, now would we?”

Herman chuckled “I’ll try dear, I’ll try.”

Emyra knew her husband very well, and she knew the screening process for Spectres was really tough, but even she could sometimes be surprised by the madness in his behavior and even in his eyes whenever he started his acting. The moment they had left the Spirit he had started his script and he was totally immersed in his role by now.

They approached the door to the executive’s office and from a desk that was set into a wall alcove a young human woman came walking towards them, almost running.

“Welcome, welcome.” She made a fast bow and started walking with them now, trying to slow them down. “Please, wait a few minutes here, Mister Masaki is in an important conference call!” She sounded almost desperate and Emyra felt sorry for her, but they had no time to play nice.

“Get out of my way, insect, I do not have the patience to wait for a call.” Herman said with a sneer that could freeze the blood. Emyra knew he felt sorry for her and that he really didn’t mean it, but there always was a chance the boss was monitoring the hallway.

The girl could barely stop herself from sobbing and pressed a button on her commlink “Sir, the spectres are here.”

Before the boss could reply Herman virtually kicked in the door.

Mister Masaki was a middle aged human man, and though his name suggested Asian descend, he was of mixed race, like almost all modern humans. The office was not too large but richly decorated with a few paintings, a clearly expensive rug on the floor and in the middle of the room a large hardwood desk. Masaki was sitting in a large leather chair behind his desk, surrounded by exotic and colorful plants.

Emyra told their escort to stay outside, and just before she closed the door, she softly said “Be nice.” gesturing to the now shaking girl.

Masaki looked up from his display and spoke into his headset “My dear friends, I am afraid I will have to cut this conversation short, I am about to be harassed by Spectres.”
He sighed and pressed a button on his keyboard. “Yes? What can I do for you?” He was clearly highly annoyed.

Herman clapped his hands together and formed an obvious false smile. “Mister Masaki! It is so nice to meet you. What you can do for us? Oh, not much, just tell us why and how you are working with the Collectors.”

Masaki only twitched for an instant, barely visible, and he recovered quickly but they both caught it. “The Collectors you say? And what kind of collectors would you be talking about? Double Helix makes a lot of goods, but I don’t think any of them are collectables.”

One of the plant pots behind the desk exploded and Masaki almost fell out of his chair of surprise and fear. It had been a carefully measured and controlled biotic blast, but Masaki didn’t know this. Herman shivered and snorted, then he smiled again, like nothing special happened.

“My apologies, I sometimes lose control when people are lying to me.”

The panic and fear was now clearly visible on Masaki’s face, this was definitely the way to go. For an asari, this wouldn’t have been very scary, biotics were very common among them, but to a human, among whom biotics were extremely rare and often linked to mental illnesses, this was possibly the scariest thing imaginable.

“I… I… I don’t know what you are talking about! Whatever happened, I didn’t do it!”
Another pot exploded, Herman hadn’t had time to recharge from the first blast yet, so Emyra jumped in seamlessly.

Herman’s head now shook from anger, his eyes spitting fire. “What did I tell you about lying!” he shouted. He calmed down almost instantly though, adding to the effect of an out of control lunatic.

“If I were you, I’d tell us about your deal with the Collectors now, Mister Masaki, before he completely loses control.” Emyra quietly added “We know the Blue Grimmers Mercenaries kidnapped the last group for the Collectors, and we know they work for you.” Her calm voice was a complete opposite of Herman’s anger and it threw him even further off balance.

“Okay okay! The Blue Grimmers work for me, that’s true, but I don’t know anything about a deal with the Collectors.” He showed true fear on his face, but there was still at least a part of his mental spine that wasn’t broken yet.

Herman inhaled a large lung full of air, spread his arms in the air, spun around and bellowed. “Ladies and gentleman! Welcome to today’s auction! Today we have a very special item for you. What item might that be, I can hear you think? That very special item I am talking about is none other than Mister Masaki’s life!” He spun around and faced Masaki, who’s eyes had widened out of fear but was too stunned to say anything.

“In today’s auction everything has to go! Do I hear an opening bid for this phenomenal item?” Masaki looked completely stunned, Emyra barely managed to keep a straight face and from outside the door she could hear some of the marines and commandos laughing loudly.

“Yes yes yes! Me me! I’ll give you ten credits!” Herman said in a very deep and deformed voice. He cocked his head in an exaggerated motion, like he was listening for it.

“What’s that mister Shotgun? Ten credits you say? Okay people! We have an opening bid, ten credits! Do I hear more? Misses Assault rifle maybe?”

“Oh, yes, I’ll offer a hundred!” He said in a clearly failed impression of a woman’s voice.

“Oh! Very rich, a hundred! Anyone higher?”

All this time Masaki had been in shock, now he finally recovered just a bit. He whispered, barely audible “Ehm, I have five thousand on hand, I can get you more.”

Emyra couldn’t remember this scheme ever shocking people so badly they actually started bidding themselves, and she simply couldn’t control herself anymore and started laughing too.

Herman recovered very quickly from the surprise and stayed in character. “Oh my! Five thousand! We are going to be rich! I think this is going to be the winning bid people! So, going once, going twice…”

Masaki’s obvious relieve that he was going to live was instantly crushed when Herman mumbled something.
He pulled his pistol from his hip and held it near his ear, intensely listening to it. He mumbled to it and then listened to it again; he repeated the process for a few minutes, keeping Masaki on a mentally killing edge. Finally he spoke up again, now in a very serious voice.

“My dear friend mister Pistol is willing to offer the location of the Grimmers base, I’m afraid I’ll be accepting that bid as of higher value.” He slowly moved his pistol towards Masaki’s face, who was now sitting with wide eyes, an open mouth and was shaking all over.

He started to pull the trigger and then suddenly stopped, like he just thought of something. “Or, maybe you could tell us where and how to find the Collectors?”

Mister Masaki now started sobbing and he stuttered “I’ll tell you anything, anything! Just please don’t kill me! I have all you want on a data card!”

Seeing he had now finally broken him completely, Herman picked up the data card and dropped his role. He smiled “Sorry ‘bout that. Marines! Please arrest this man.”

The marines already had him in cuffs before it finally dawned to Masaki that it had all been an act and while they hauled him away he screamed “You can’t just do this! I’ll sue you for this!” Emyra just looked at her husband and smiled.

“Damn, that man was weak, I hardly said a word. How boring.” She put on a mock sad face. He simply kissed her on her forehead, put his arm around her and started back to the ship.

 
The Shield IV, near unknown space station.


The small shuttle slowly maneuvered free from the Shield and started accelerating towards the space station. It was long and flat with a big round hole in the middle, from that hole a shaft led to one ‘end’ of the station. It was at least as large as a Stardestroyer and it was… purple.

As the Shield approached it had started to come to life, partially anyways. One of the landing bays had opened and according to sensors life support was online as well.

Stera couldn’t say she minded, exploring a station that large in zero g would be a bitch. Just to be on the safe side she had ordered the marines to wear full armor with reflex helmets, light helmets that didn’t restrict movement but that would close within a microsecond if they sensed decompression.

“We’ll land in thirty seconds.” The pilot announced as the shuttle maneuvered towards the docking bay.

“Okay people, landing in twenty five! Get ready.” Stera shouted while locking her helmet into place. She switched to the general channel “Still no signs of activity on the station, Shield?”

“Affirmative, still nothing.” The totally mingled voice of the captain came back, heavy military encryption had the nasty habit of ruining a voice.

As the shuttle landed she could feel the gravity shift slightly the moment they touched down, good, the artificial gravity was working. As soon as the landing gear touched the ground the door popped open and two troopers and nine marines stormed out, taking defensive positions around the shuttle.

The landing bay was simply that; a large landing bay. The shuttle would have probably fitted in there about fifty times over and other than one medium sized door there was absolutely nothing of interest there.

“Landing bay clear, Wilkens, Stiff, Arrol, stay with the shuttle, everyone else; prepare to breach that door!” she ordered and took up position right next to the door, stun grenade in hand.

Once they formed up at both sides of the door, she ordered one of the marines to open the door. It obviously wasn’t meant to hold intruders because the panel had only two buttons, and the biggest one opened the door.

The stun grenade went off and half a second later and they stormed inside and started covering the hallway. The sensors apparently were right; there was nothing there, just about fifty meters of hallway and six more doors.


“Door one!” Stera ordered. She and three marines flanked door one while Emily and the other three covered the rest of the doors.

The door opened and the grenade exploded. Half a second after the explosion she stepped inside covering the left half of the room, one of the marines stepped in right behind her, covering the right half. The hallway they entered was completely empty and showed three more doors. “Clear!” she said and got the same answer from the marine next to her.

“Okay, mine it for now; we’ll clear the rest out first.” One of the marines stepped passed her and planted a motion mine in the hallway. As he stepped back behind her he snapped his gun up covering the hallway and tapped her on her shoulder. She walked back through the door and took position outside it. The last marine now came walking backwards through the doorway as well and as soon as he was through she closed the door.

“Door two!” she ordered, and they formed up again. The whole process was repeated five times and all five times they found nothing but empty hallway.

“Okay, no ambush here, but we stay alert.”

One of the marines pointed at something that could be writing above the doors, hidden by dust and age. Stera activated her helmet sensor enhancements and started analyzing the vague shapes. There was definitely some writing there, quite pristine actually, just hidden by the dust and the strange shape of the characters.

“Stiff, bring the droid, I want something translated.” The droid she was talking about was a heavily modified R6 unit, the techs had welded a speech module onto its dome and downloaded a protocol droid coding into it. It wasn’t perfect, but they had to improvise.


“You needed my help in translating something, Miss Stera? I can inform you that I am fluent in over eight-”

Damnit she thought, did they have to copy the damn personality as well? She cut it off before it could tell her its life story. “Yes, I need you to translate that.” She said as she pointed at the text above the doors.

“Oh goodness me! It is a language that is not in my database! Although it does resemble one of the ancient attempts to create a universal trading language, you see, most languages are built on culture, not logic, this language however-”

Stera rolled her eyes behind her helmet and sighed. “Yes, very interesting, now, can you translate it, yes or no?”

“Oh, but of course! I am programmed to adapt to changes in languages and assist even in first contacts; therefore, deciphering unknowns is one of my many functions. You see, when the first model of my kind-”

She glared angrily at the malformed droid, if looks could kill… “Then shut the hell up and just do it, will you!”

“Oh my!” it said and finally shut up.



It took the droid less than ten minutes to decipher the new language. While it had been busy it almost non-stop talked about how similar the language was to other languages in its database and how strange that was since they were in a different galaxy altogether. Only a kick in the backside from an irritated marine had permanently shut it up. It had been mumbling to itself, as if sobbing, for the rest of the time.

“Miss Stera, I feel I can positively report that I now understand this language.” Its tone lacked all of its usual cheerfulness, it was apparently still angry about the kick.

“Okay then? What does it say?” Stera asked, wondering why the hell they programmed those droids with such an annoying personality. She had to admit though, it worked faster than she expected.

“From the hangar, going clockwise, it says the following: Door one: ‘Observation room one and two’, Door two: ‘Power generator and fuel depot’, Door three: nothing. Door four: ‘Recreation area’, Door five: ‘Station control centre’, Door six: nothing.” It said in a monotonous voice “I must add that these texts do not appear to represent all that can be found behind the doors, but rather that they point to places of interest.”

Behind her helmet she gave the droid a weird look as she opened her commlink. “Shield, ground one, two of the doors seem to lead to interesting points, the generator and the control centre. I intent to split up, scout both locations. Do I have a go?”

“You have a go. Good luck.” The captain answered over the comm.

“Okay, sergeant Frio, you and your squad are with me to the control centre, corporal Allesero, you and your squad are with PFC Ester to the generator.” She ordered.

-=-

Emily and her squad had been going through the station for an hour now and things were beginning to get very repetitive. The station was rather big, and there didn’t seem to be a straight route to the generator for some reason. The station was obviously old, ancient even, and that age was starting to show. Every now and then they would hit a few meters of zero-g, the gravity plating apparently failing under the pressure of its massive age.

Timmy, one of the privates, walked past her and dropped on one knee, he was followed closely by Jess. Emily stood up from her crouch and walked together with Allesero past Tim and Jess towards the corner of the hallway. They had run out of stun grenades more than half an hour ago, so cornering was more dangerous than usual. Luckily stormtroopers always came prepared. She quickly tipped her gun around the corner and pulled up the gun-cam on her HUD.

“Hallway clear, two doors.” She said and dropped on her knee just around the corner. She was quickly followed by the three marines.

“It’s the left one; we’ll clear the right one first.” She said as her scanners recognized the markings above the door.

They had been clearing rooms and corridors for the better part of the last hour, so the forming up and the entering went flawlessly. The room behind the door was yet another empty living room, like so many before. There was one small difference about this one though; there was a hole in the wall.

The moment the door opened Emily could feel a gust of wind rushing past her. A big red warning light sprung to life on her HUD and she could see the faceplates of the marines’ helmets slam shut.

“Decomp! Decomp! Out! Out! Out! Close the door!” she shouted and she roughly pulled the marine in front of her back. Speed was essential here, the marines only had five minutes of air, and she had only double that.

The door slammed shut only a few seconds after it had been opened. Luckily not all of the air in the hallway had escaped, and she could hear the ventilation system replenishing the supply.

“Fuck!” Jess shouted, clearly shaken by the event.

“Sit-rep!” Stera’s voice came over the comm.

“We opened a decompressed door ma’am, warning system on the door wasn’t working, everyone’s okay. According to the scans we are nearly at the generator.” Emily replied.

“Good, we are almost at the control room as well, continue and report when you are there. Stera out.”

-=-

When the decompression situation had happened with the other squad, Stera and her squad had been only three minutes away from the control centre. Now they were there. They had cleared and mined all the connecting hallways and they now turned their attention to the room itself. It was a large circular room, at least twenty meters in diameter, and all around the walls there were large view screens. The room itself was filled with circles in circles of consoles and comfortable looking chairs. Between the consoles there were large pots that probably housed large and impressive plants long ago. All of it was covered in a thick layer of dust.

“Shield, Ground one, we have cleared and secured the control room, the generator should be clear and secure any moment now. We have encountered zero hostile or other contact and I advise you bring techs aboard now, sir.”

“Acknowledged.” The captain replied “we will be landing the Shield in the hangar. Please report to the hangar bay, your squad can stay in the control.”

“Yes sir, I will be there in ten minutes.” She said. She wondered why the captain wanted her to report in the hangar. “Hold this position, I will be going back to the hangar. Techs will be here soon.” She said to the marines and she started back in the direction they had come from.

-=-

Yornic couldn’t just admit that he had called her back to the hanger because he had a terrible sense of direction of course so he had come up with a rather silly excuse about him being interested in how they cleared all the rooms and hallways. He didn’t mind spending some time with her talking about ‘covering’, ‘frog bounding’ and ‘clearing procedures’ of course, but he was slightly relieved when they had finally reached the control. Now, almost three hours of listening to reports about technical stuff later, he wished he was still talking about the stun grenades with her. He was a smart man, sure, but he was good with people and tactical situations, not with the technical stuff.

“Chief, please, just give me the short version, in basic please.” He said to the engineering chief who had been explaining her findings for the past ten minutes.

“Well…” The woman replied “to keep it simple, it’s either a really big gun, or a FTL device, sir.”

Yornics frown became even more prominent. “A gun or a FTL, how do you figure that?”

The chief sighed “As I’ve been explaining sir, most of the technology we found is completely obsolete. However, we found one exception to that rule, the so called ‘Mass Effect’. It seems to be some sort of technology that is used to accelerate objects to near relativistic speeds. It appears this forms the main weapon of the people who built this station, just accelerating a chunk of metal to make a kinetic weapon. Now, this station uses the same basic technology, but in a completely different manner. It creates a sort of mass-less ‘tube’ through space, allowing objects to be accelerated to near infinite speed.”

She drew a deep breath and continued. “Now, one of my engineers suggested this might be used as some sort of inter-stellar gun, but I feel the station doesn’t generate enough energy to justify the gun theory, it would barely be able to dent the shields of The Shield. My theory is that this is a FTL station. In the computers we found remote access codes and a set of three extremely precise target coordinates. I think this station is used to accelerate objects, probably ships, and shoot them across thousands of lightyears instantly. I would bet that the coordinates in the computer are similar stations like this one, being able to slow down incoming ships.”

Yornic was silent for a few seconds, letting everything sink in. “Thousands of lightyears… That doesn’t sound very far, that’s just about, what, half an hour in hyperspace?”

“Well, I think they can’t align the stations precise enough to allow for greater distances. If you have a whole network of these stations however, you could ‘hop’ from one to another, and get across the galaxy in a fairly short amount of time. Besides, I can say for sure that their ship board FTL capabilities are far from as advanced. I’d say they might be able to make… eeehm… a hundred times the speed of light maybe. Unless they have some kind of technology that is not listed in these databases of course.”

“Right…” Yornic had to admit instant travel sounded very attractive, but he didn’t like the fact that she was guessing there was a ‘braking station’ on the other side. “Okay, here’s what we’ll do: You pull those addresses from the computer and send them to the Shield. We’ll be going there, but we’ll be going there the old fashioned way.”

She saluted “Yes sir!” and turned around, already typing on her computer-tab.

“Shield, captain, You will be receiving coordinates from the chief soon, I want navigation to start plotting a hyper-course to all three of them.”

“Yes sir.” The voice of the XO came back “Sir, navigation informs me that speed will be an issue here, we’ll be limited to ten percent speed due to lack of navigation data sir.” “ No problem, it’ll only be a few thousand lightyears. Just make it happen Gsahe.”

“Yes sir.”

Yornic looked around the room until he found what he was looking for. “Hey, you! Protocol-R6, get over here, now.”

“Is there anything I can do for you, Mister Yornic?” the droid said in his usual cheerful voice.

“Yes, you have two hours to refresh my memory on first contact protocol.”

[Darth Ruinus]

I'm actually quite interested in reading a Mass Effect Star Wars crossover.